sore must be the storm
by coalitiongirl
Summary: In which Emma is Robin Hood and Regina is her Maid Marian. After one ambush gone wrong, Emma finds her path entwined with a young girl who's en route to a forced marriage with a king. 20 years and a lot of games and rivalry and bitterness pass, and they're still in each other's paths, careening toward destruction (and a certain green-skinned witch with both of them in her sights).
1. Chapter 1

**This was another oneshot that is instead going to be...very, very long. Expect it not to be finished until the end of the season (which'll be nice, anyway, because my outline so far only hits present day and I think we'll have lots of material to work with by the time 3b is done!) and possibly might even hit twenty chapters. We'll see!**

**Notes about the background of this fic- I wanted to keep Emma and Regina true to character, which means as much of their canon storylines are incorporated here as was possible. I've obviously had to change Emma's parentage (as little as I could, but more on that later) and there's going to be some tweaking of the curse when it comes, but assume that most of what you still know about both of them is true unless told otherwise.**

* * *

_Sixty feet. Fifty. Forty-five._

She creeps forward, tracking her progress by the bushes that decorate the land around the castle, the guards oblivious to her presence as she moves through them. Ahead along the road, James is walking with King George, arm-in-arm with a smug-eyed girl Emma's never seen with him before. He laughs, his father scowls, and Emma rolls her eyes, unseen._ Typical_. James has been insufferable since he hit puberty, and she's had the misfortune to witness it throughout.

Not that he knows that.

She tucks her chin in beneath her hood, pulls her fingers back, and lets fly, her arrow shooting straight and true. It whooshes past James and she smirks when he jumps to the side, his sword drawn and eyes wide, and King George has barely enough time to growl out, "It's him! The Swan!" before Emma's flying across the clearing, forty feet-thirty-twenty-ten, her eyes on her true target.

She leaps up onto James's prize steed- his pride and joy, from what she's heard him drunkenly bellowing with his men in the taverns- her grey-white cloak whipping around her as she pats him on the head once, dodging his sword, and squeezes her boots together against the stallion's sides. "Ha!" she shouts in her deepest voice, and then they're running together, her new horse galloping away as she turns back to watch James and George's outrage and the knights only now rushing for their own horses.

* * *

She sells the horse for a hefty sum to a stable near the border of King Leopold's kingdom. James will search for his horse, she's sure, but he's fickle enough to rage and vent and then find new interest. _Same for the girl he'd been with_, she thinks, and doesn't feel very bad about it. He won't look this far, and if he tries to trace the profits, he won't find them.

She makes her way to the closest marketplace and ducks into a grubby little room, nodding to the hulking figure who's sitting at the table inside, contemplating a chessboard. "Good game?"

"Will's knight has been a menace," he grunts, and the man sitting opposite him quirks an eyebrow and takes a pawn. "Might be time to…" A meaty finger moves forward to push the black queen from its starting place, two spaces from the knight. "Good game?" he echoes.

She slips out of her cloak, tucking it into her carrying bag. "King George's son lost his favorite toy."

Will laughs. "It wouldn't be a good day if Swan weren't a thorn in the king's side." He rests a finger against the point of the knight's horse-head, rubbing it absently. "There are reports of a carriage bearing King Leopold's coat of arms near the far end of the kingdom."

Emma perks up midway through changing. "Just one carriage?"

"Moving slowly. Laden with bags."

She slips into the green dress that had been hanging in the room, closing the catches in the front and twisting it around her before she slides her arms inside. "What kind of idiot travels on the king's road without any guards these days? Don't tell me our reputation only goes so far." Her hair falls around her face, messy and tangled, and she brushes it out with her fingers. "Fine. You two set up an ambush around here. Leave me Beetle, and I'll catch up to you once I've taken care of this."

She leaves the room without looking back, twisting her fingers around her bag of earnings from James's horse.

* * *

She crosses the threshold into the marketplace and _changes_, as simply and fluidly as if she'd been doing it her whole life. Her shoulders straighten, her posture improves, and the hard lines of her face melt away as well as they ever will. She's been transformed from the toughened outlaw she's been for the past three years, the one who's gained infamy in the kingdoms since she'd turned seventeen and put on that grey hood for the first time; and now she's just another villager, well off enough to be mannered and clean, but not wearing anything wealthy enough to be mistaken for a noble.

Little John likes it when they can distribute the money on their own, with cries of, "From Swan Hood and the king!" as they ride through the streets and toss offerings to the poor who walk past. The Friar has his own agenda, and thinks that all their winnings should go to whatever religious structure is at the center of each town and their keepers should find use for them. Emma likes this- walking through the streets, an innocent face with none of the renown of the Merry Men- unbothered and unworried as she drops coins into the coffers of the poor.

She ignores their thanks and forces herself not to look back and let them focus on her face, instead dwelling on the outrage on James's face as he'd lost just one miniscule part of his ever-privileged life. Well. She's never denied that she can hold a grudge, and this one is fourteen years long and has had plenty of mileage since then. At least she's using it for good cause.

Her purse of coins is nearly empty, the line of beggars all but finished, and she pauses by the last of the row and takes a step back when she sees the girl's face. She can't be more than ten, blonde hair filthy and unwashed and her face grimy and bruised, but her eyes are strong, hope still making them shine where others have been dulled. Emma breathes, oxygen catching on something sharp and painful in her throat, and the girl stares, and Emma breathes again and nearly chokes on it and drops her purse in front of the girl instead of fishing out the coins.

She stares straight ahead and walks on until she's back at the room her men keep in this marketplace, finding her stride and pushing the child from her mind as she prepares to rob a carriage full of fools.

* * *

The deer that lies across the road is a fake, one of Emma's most valuable ideas since she'd become the icon of the Merry Men and then, in turn, their leader. They'd removed the skin and stuffed it with straw, and it's only noticeable that it's a fake once the driver gets down and inspects it. Which is, of course, Little John's cue and much too late for the driver.

There's a squabble on the road, a brief back-and-forth where weapons are brandished and the driver is swinging his sword clumsily and this is _easy_, too easy, and Emma's beginning to think that this whole encounter is an ambush for the Merry Men, not the carriage.

She steps forward, about to call for a retreat, when the carriage door opens and a woman gracefully descends to the road. Her expression is amused and she seems unworried by the men fighting it out around her, and Emma immediately senses that she's going to be more trouble than she's worth.

She could run now, but there's something in that haughtiness on the woman's face that's prickling at the defiant child that's still too close to the surface within her, and she's suddenly driven by the desire to take this carriage, trap be damned. Which is maybe reckless and stupid and she thinks she can see the woman's gaze shift to where she's hidden in the trees, but she jumps down anyway, her cloak whipping out around her feet as she lands in a solid crouch on the carriage top.

"It's the Swan!" the driver shouts out. "I warned you-" He falls silent as the woman holds up a commanding hand, his eyes bulging out with new fear, and Little John is leaping onto the driver's seat of the carriage with improbable agility as one of the other men yanks the rope attached to the deer out of their way and into the woods. The woman doesn't move, just cocks her head and stares at Emma again, and Emma shouts, "Go!" to Little John as they take off away from the skirmish.

The woman doesn't follow, and Emma exhales. She hadn't even noticed that she'd been holding her breath.

But they have the carriage, and it is in fact heavy with all the luggage inside. A vacationing noble, probably, off with her riches and the cockiness of the upper class, mistakenly choosing speed over caution and paying the price for it. That's all this is, even if Emma can't shake the unease brought on by that woman- still standing in the road as Merry Men make their retreat, watching them unworried in the distance- and how easily the attack had gone. They have the carriage, they have whatever's inside, and it's time for Emma to climb in and take stock of what it is.

She scrambles over to the window and slips inside, pushing away curtains to inspect the interior of the coach. There are plenty of bags, and the finery of the nobility draped around them. Dresses and jewels and a fat-looking pouch on one seat–

And in the opposite seat, a dark-haired girl who would have been beautiful if not for the blankness in her eyes when she turns to stare at Emma. "Swan Hood," she says carefully. "The Hooded Swan. Whatever they call you in these parts."

Emma stares, remembering just in time to be sure that her cloak is still concealing her face.

And oh, yes, the girl _is_ beautiful, enough so that Emma can't stop looking at her, can't remember to draw her arrow in time when the girl stands up and walks to the window. She's unafraid, but there's a recklessness in her eyes, a desperation to her uncaring that Emma recognizes all too well.

_Trapped_. The girl is trapped, and it's not just by the outlaws who've seized her carriage. No, this is someone beyond despair, beyond hope, beyond the belief that anyone is going to save her from whatever fate she's been doomed to. _No one saves us but ourselves_, Emma almost says, before she remembers that she can't say anything at all and she _shouldn't_, not to this girl whom they're going to have to tie up and leave in some distant town tonight. She thinks back to the beggar girl on the road and to another girl, fourteen and still fighting with impotence, hidden in the back of a wagon full of lumber and never expecting to have hope again.

Emma doesn't reach out to people, even pretty girls a year or two older than her who would probably look so nice with smiles on their faces, who look like they may never smile again. She scowls at herself for even thinking about it, and now she's just standing around like an idiot as the girl is walking through the carriage, about as intimidated by the famed Swan as her companion had been, and Emma can't think of a single way to scare this girl into submission. Emma doesn't _want _to scare this girl at all, not when she seems so scared already of an inevitability Emma will not allow herself to ask about.

Then the girl turns back to her and says, almost regretful, "My mother's going to kill you."

Emma blinks under her hood and lets out an unintelligible, "Huh?"

The girl shakes her head. "You should run away while you can. My mother's going to kill you," she repeats. "The only reason she hasn't yet is because-" She hesitates, and then that blankness is back in her eyes, sorrow glistening at their corners. "She likes it when you run. When there's some hope before…" She twists her fingers together, something gleaming beneath them, and a chill runs through Emma's spine before the girl looks up again. "She has magic, you know."

And _there's_ the piece of the mystery that explains the woman's serenity even as she must have known that her daughter was being kidnapped and her possessions stolen. Magic. Emma loathes magic, loathes the privilege of it nearly as much as she hates the nobility. Magic had been what had found James when she was three. Magic is why they've lost men near the Dark One's castle. Magic is darkness for those the fairies don't deem worthy to help, and magic only destroys.

She's at the window with the girl in two quick strides, pushing the curtains aside again, when there's a loud thump and the carriage stops short in the road. The girl's eyes widen, and she gives Emma a push. "She's here. Run to the woods, _now_." Her voice is at once imperious, an aristocrat after all, but Emma can't find the energy to hate her for it.

She climbs through the window, glancing worriedly at Little John as he whips the horses forward, bewildered at why they're all frozen, and then she sees them. Branches reaching from the trees, twisting and stretching out like some kind of nightmarish living creature, snatching John from his place and lifting him into the air as he bellows out a challenge. "Like _hell_," she snaps out through gritted teeth, swinging her feet out of the window to climb to the top again.

Firm hands grab her again, this time just above the waist, and she sees the moment that the girl's eyes widen. "You're a girl?" she whispers, startled.

"Let go of me!" Emma snaps, pulling away. Her eyes are on Little John but the girl is grasping her arm now, her other hand wrapping around Emma's.

She tightens her grip, the shock of the revelation gone with the approach of her mother. "You wait here, and you're both dead. Go! I'll take care of him, I swear."

And Emma hesitates for a moment, if only to ask, "Why do you care?"

The panic fades from the girl's eyes, leaving only emptiness behind. "I don't care about anything anymore," she says, and something cool and delicate presses against Emma's palm. "For your trouble," she murmurs. "I'd hate to see you having faced my mother with no recompense." She allows herself a tiny smile, and it's exactly as breathtaking as Emma would have imagined. "Now leave!"

Emma leaves. She stumbles into the woods, climbing from tree to tree and hoping to death that they don't suddenly come to life and attack her, too, and when she has a good vantage point of the place where Little John is being held, she perches between two branches and draws her arrows, dropping the girl's gift into her bag before she can look at it.

She's let a single arrow fly and embed itself in a writhing branch that doesn't react to the attack when she sees the girl emerge from the coach, calling out to no one at all until there's a poof of magic and her mother appears in the middle of the road, still with the same smile on her face. It doesn't fade as the girl starts arguing and gesturing to Little John, and then the woman twists her hand and John is suddenly standing where the girl had been, still shouting curses at nothingness as he struggles in place.

He realizes he's free and bolts to the woods where Emma had run moments before, and Emma breathes, relieved, and glances back to the wild branches that had magically grabbed him.

The girl is wrapped in the same position as John had been, her chin high with defiance and the frustration across her face nearly eclipsed by what might be pride, if Emma squints.

And she _understands_, she gets this girl she's only just met and seen herself in her eyes. She knows exactly what it feels like to have a tiny victory when you're penned like livestock, one single act of autonomy when the people who have you trapped lose control of you for just a minute. The girl is terrified but she's also _won_, and maybe that matters in the end more than the mother who cares so little about her daughter that she would keep smiling as her daughter is suspended above her.

She keeps watch over the girl, listening to the faint strains of argument between her and her mother and trying not to think about what it might mean that the girl is so calm in this tree-hold, until she's finally back on the ground and the carriage is back on its way to King Leopold.

* * *

Beetle is still tied to a tree where she'd left him, a half mile back in the woods, and he chews on her hair when she takes off her cloak and mounts him, riding exhaustedly back to where the Merry Men have made camp. She can see Little John and Will seated around a low fire, telling the others about what they'd fought today, and John beckons her to join them.

She does so out of half-hearted obligation, sitting up next to him and listening as he recounts the story, and she's zoned out staring at the flames when he nudges her. "What did you say to that maiden to have her defend me so fiercely?" he rumbles, and she shrugs, feeling self-conscious in the crowd.

Maybe she's officially the leader of the Merry Men, the one they follow without question and the icon that's left King George and the rest of the rich apoplectic with rage for the past year, but she hasn't won their loyalty, not like Little John has. They follow her because John insists on it, and behind her back she's sure that they whisper about her- about the seventeen-year-old girl who'd taken charge of a group of forest men and given them purpose as outlaws and benefactors to the poor. About the girl who keeps herself separate from them and has no interest in being friends or even family with her men. (She'd had a family once, then another, and the falseness of family and love goes hand-in-hand with abandonment in her mind. Better duty than family. Better dinner on the table than love.) She can feel their interest on her now, their eyes on her cheeks as she flushes- from the heat of the fire, nothing more- and looks down.

"She said she didn't care," Emma finally allows, and then she remembers the trinket she'd been passed. "She gave me…" She digs into her satchel to find it. "She gave me this," she says, staring down at the item as the reason behind the girl's hollow eyes becomes ever clearer, and she can't explain the sorrow that washes over her at the revelation.

The engagement ring in her palm glitters in the firelight, the diamond impressive and masterfully cut, so clear that she can nearly see the reflection of a gilded cage sparkling back at her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Apparently I have _no idea_ how to keep chapters consistent lengths. I tried with this one, but the girls protested and instead this is nearly double the word count of the last, oh well.**

**We're past We Are Both area now and headed for The Doctor next chapter. Yikes.**

* * *

When she thinks back to the girl from the carriage, months later, she can't remember why she had been so captivated by her. She remembers a face painted delicately and eyes that had been _important_, but the memories of them have been dulled with time and she's had more than enough time to laugh at the way she'd romanticized the encounter, had dared to imagine a connection with a girl who'd probably only been scared out of her mind.

Still, though, it takes her weeks before she's ready to part with the ring the girl had given her and use the profits to feed a sanctuary of exiled serfs from King Midas's kingdom. It's more valuable than she'd have ever thought and she doesn't admit throughout that she's hanging onto it in the hopes that whoever had given it to the girl might send out men for it, might give some tiny hint of what happened next to her. And when she does admit it, that's the day she sends Alan-a-Dale to a metalsmith to rid herself of the jewelry, chastising herself privately for her foolishness.

She doesn't even know the girl's name, know anything about her other than the softness of her hands as they'd covered Emma's palm and the fierceness of her defiance as she'd hovered in midair over her mother. Emma doesn't dwell on people, doesn't give thought to the many she's met in the past, kindnesses given and exchanged and cruelties offered unsolicited. She thinks of her men and she thinks of her targets before she robs them, and that's all she allows herself to contemplate.

It's fitting, then, that the next time she sees the girl it's in another of King Leopold's carriages as the Merry Men fight its guards below.

* * *

"You!" she says, gaping under her hood at the girl sitting back in her seat, hands barely locked together on her lap as she gazes at Emma. She's clad in royal finery this time, swathed in expensive fabrics and jewels that sparkle at her neck and her wrists and her ears, and when she looks up at Emma- face upturned and shining and sad, so very sad- Emma remembers exactly what it was that had left her thinking about the girl for months.

She'd jumped into the carriage the moment she'd seen King Leopold's coat of arms on the side instead of taking the driver's seat, and she doesn't want to think about why _that_ had happened, either. That kind of eagerness is reserved for irritating King George's lackeys. Not the off chance that a royal carriage might hold a miserable girl she'd barely met.

"Lady Swan," the girl almost drawls, inclining her head as she regards Emma, and Emma's own head tilts unconsciously as she stares at her. The blankness is still there, creasing the corners of her eyes, and Emma blinks and looks away, uncomfortable at the way her chest tightens at the sight of it. "What a surprise."

Emma remembers her voice a moment too late, and she licks her lips nervously as the girl waits in silence. "Hasn't anyone warned you off this road by now?"

"Oh, yes." She tosses her hair back. It's longer now, fuller, and the effect leaves Emma's mouth dry. "There are all manner of bandits on the king's road, I hear. If I value my possessions, I'm not to ride this way." She shrugs, an unsophisticated motion that suits her age instead of her station. "But you already know that I don't care about any of this. King Leopold will be a little poorer, and the villagers can eat better for a day."

"How very noble of you." It might have been, if it didn't sound more bitter than earnest, and Emma wonders what her victim has against the king.

She picks up the travel pack beside the girl and fishes through it, half-challenging the girl to display any kind of reaction to the haphazard way she's pulling out the goods inside. A handkerchief drops to the floor, a pair of jeweled gloves is shoved into her pocket, and she notices with some glee that the girl's eyes are narrowing with displeasure at her callousness.

Which…yeah, maybe she's just trawling for something other than emptiness on that comely face, tugging pigtails in the schoolyard when she grabs a loaf of bread and takes a bite out of it, but she thinks it's probably worth it for the hot spots of angry color that darken the girl's fine cheekbones.

"Problem?" She smirks under her hood and catches another flash of irritation before the girl's chin is raised again and her eyes flick to the window, a hand running through that rich hair as she does.

"Do what you will," the girl says, her tone supremely bored, and Emma scowls in return.

She spots a flash of gold behind the girl's fingers and is moving forward before her head catches up with the rest of her body, a hand brushing aside the girl's hair to inspect the earring below it. It's gold filigree wound around red jewels, expensive and ornate. And when she holds it between her fingers, she can feel the soft skin of its bearer's cheek against her hand, shivering at her touch.

She shivers, too, and masks it with a whisper. "How about these earrings? Do you care about these earrings?"

She's close enough to the other girl that her breath is brushing against the side of her face, and she can sense the girl stiffening beneath her touch as dark eyes peer into the darkness under her hood, the game over as quickly as it had begun. "What's your name?" Emma murmurs, her fingers stroking the jewelry and the earlobe at once. The girl makes no move to remove her hand, and Emma thinks she might have leaned into the knuckles still resting against her cheek. "Who are you to the king?"

And then the girl's hands are sliding up her shoulders, her head cocked and the emptiness has been replaced with dark eyes that sing with promise and defiance and a hint of something more. "Show me your face, Lady Swan," she hums instead, her thumbs curling around the place where Emma's hood meets her shoulders.

Emma recoils. Suddenly the air of the carriage is too stifling, the girl's face too knowing and the space between them too small. She takes a shaky step back, the girl's fingers falling lightly from Emma's cloak back to her lap. And then she's fumbling for a knife, pulling one out from where it's concealed under her cloak and brandishing it with shaky hands. "Leave the carriage," she says, and the fear that glimmers across the girl's face isn't reassuring at all. "We've travelled far enough from your guards."

The girl stares down at her hands, and for a moment Emma thinks she sees an impossible fire flicker in her palm. But it's gone when she blinks and then the girl is rising, stepping down gracefully to the door of the coach as Emma motions to Will in the driver's seat and they rock to a halt. "Give her one of the horses," Emma calls out to him.

He frowns, his eyes flicking over to the girl who seems unsurprised by the female voice emanating from the Hooded Swan, but Emma doesn't enlighten him. "These are thoroughbreds straight from the king's castle. You don't want to keep them?"

She doesn't respond, just stalks over to the larger horse and unties it, leading it back to the girl. "Can you ride?" she asks, and maybe there's a tiny bit of regret on the girl's face as she studies her.

"Yes." The girl mounts the horse with skill that startles Emma, drawing her skirts up so she can perch on its bare back as though she's done it a thousand times before. "Thank you," she says, smiling beneath her eyelashes, and the back of Emma's neck is suddenly uncomfortably warm.

She shrugs, unwilling to say anything else to the girl, and there's still too much closeness between them even while the girl is on horseback several feet away. She can still remember those shiny eyes, that whisper of _Show me your face, Lady Swan _still ringing in her ears, and she pulls her cloak ever closer to her as she watches the horse and its rider turn away.

"Lady Swan." The horse pauses, the girl atop it half-turned to look at her. She inclines her head at Emma. "Regina."

"That's not my name," Emma says dumbly, and the girl's lips spread into the second smile she's given her thus far. Not that Emma's counting or anything.

She tucks her hair behind her ears, and there's a hair tie in her fingers that appears out of nowhere as she fastens the rest back. Her earrings gleam red and gold in the sunlight. "It's mine."

And Emma looks at her because _of course it is_, it suits her as well as her horse and her dress and the smile still bright on her face, but she can't think of anything to say to that revelation other than the one awful connection she can make to the name. "King Leopold wed a Regina last month."

The smile fades as swiftly as it had come, melting away into nothingness and unspoken melancholy. Regina recoils as quickly as Emma had done the same, jolting the horse back into motion and turning her back to the carriage and the outlaws and the surprise on Emma's face.

Emma doesn't chase her. She's hit by…anger, really, not anger pointed at Regina but at something frustrating and indistinct that only gets worse when they take apart the carriage and she opens Regina's case. There are jewels to sell and money to give away but she's left staring at the dresses and comparing them to the simple traveling clothes that Regina had been wearing the first time they'd met.

She draws a silvery one to her chest and wonders if Regina had ever worn it when she announces to her Merry Men, "I have an idea."

* * *

In a rare burst of vanity, she'd had a mask specially made for the occasion, and she studies it with satisfaction before she puts it on. It's the same silver as the dress she wears, feathered with white and two matching white swans surrounding the eyeholes. The feathers and flowers are enough to conceal most of her face, and she hardly thinks anyone in King George's castle will recognize her by her lips or chin.

It's James's eighteenth birthday, and his father has already begun prospecting for a wealthy match by throwing a masquerade ball in his honor. It's not an uncommon move, though James is young enough that there are some whispers at the door, and the nobles all come flowing through the door, eager for a royal match and distracting enough that the guards will be less alert than usual.

Emma is wearing Regina's dress, and she's grateful that the other girl- the_ queen_,and Emma swallows her distaste and forces a smile under her mask- seems not to favor the puffy dresses that half the attending are wearing. No, this is long and sleek, the sleeves nearly sheer under delicate lacing and the material puddling at the floor. Regina's a little shorter than she is and the dress isn't quite a perfect fit because of it, but she's already getting some stares from walking too rapidly and clumsily for the fit of the dress to make a difference.

She's on Alan-a-Dale's arm. He'd been deemed the most presentable of the Merry Men, and he pauses only to scold her when she trips on the length of her dress or hitches it up high enough to expose her ankles. "You are a _lady_," he reminds her. "A princess, most likely. If we wish to make it past the guards, you must keep up the image."

"I'm trying!" she hisses back, and then they're walking into the castle with polite smiles on their faces, Emma careful not to look around too carefully. Her eyes need to be on the wall tapestries and the dancers and the food, not the number of guards or the locked doors or the purses held by escorts.

And certainly not on long staircases that seem smaller now, towering suits of armor that she'd once barely reached the knees of, and tantalizing glimpses of doors and halls that she still recognizes after all these years.

She stumbles only once more before they're in the ballroom and she's swept away from Alan-a-Dale by a man she thinks she might have robbed once in a heist near outside King John's kingdom. She steps on his toes twice and flashes him her falsest smile and he grins back and, to his credit, makes it through half the dance before giving up.

She makes her way through as many men as she can, dancing her way closer and closer to the hall that opens to the throne room with every step. Alan-a-Dale is doing the same near the buffet, save the dancing part. _Men._ She scowls at him jealously when he grins at her with his mouth full. There are no women at the buffet, only a few little princesses who eat daintily and point excitedly at the men and dresses around them.

One of them is gawking at James, her little mask in her hands so she can watch him properly. "He's so handsome!" she says when Emma makes her way over to her companion. "Do you think I might find love like him someday?"

"You can do better than him, I'm sure," Emma says dryly, snatching a piece of chicken off Alan's plate.

The girl stares at her, half-impressed and half-horrified at her lack of manners. "I do apologize," she says, stretching out her hand. "I hadn't seen your hair and for a moment I'd thought you were my stepmother."

Emma shakes the hand, then remembers halfway through that she's probably supposed to be kissing it or holding it or something properly ladylike. "That's okay." The girl is still staring at her, and she says, "You want to dance a little?" more to quell that perplexed look than out of any real desire to get back on the dance floor. Still, she's a cute kid, and she's only a few years from when these balls probably become agonizing even for the princesses. There's no harm in a dance that isn't with another overly eager man.

She spins her around a few times as the girl oohs and ahs at the other dancers around them. "This is my first ball since my mother died," she tells Emma. "I danced with my stepmother at the wedding, but that wasn't like this." She beams. "This is so _big_! I'm only thirteen- too young to marry, of course, but I begged Father and he said that if it made me happy, Stepmother and I could travel here on our own." Her brow furrows as she suddenly remembers her manners. "What's your name? Where are you from?"

Emma's saved from inventing something by a familiar voice. "May I cut in?" And it's James, of course, flashing a charming smile at the girl as she squeaks out an unintelligible response and he turns to Emma. "I don't recall dancing with you tonight, my lady…"

"Emma," she says, and studies his face carefully for a reaction to her name. There's none. "Lady Emma of Locksley."

He cocks his head. "Have you been here before? There's something familiar about you that I can't place."

"Not since I was very young," she allows. She treads on his foot, probably accidentally, and watches with faint enjoyment as he winces. "Perhaps you might remember me from then? You wouldn't have been more than three at the most, though."

He glances at her, suddenly apprehensive under his mask, and she smiles politely in return.

The dance ends quickly, James still watching her with puzzled eyes and Emma focusing on not bruising his feet permanently, and it's a relief when she can spin away into someone else's arms.

Someone who catches her with a familiarity borne of doing it before, and she swallows hard when she sees eyes she knows well under the girl's mask. "What a lovely dress," Regina says, her gaze boring into her. "I once had one just like it."

The queen spins, one finger curled around one of Emma's as she twirls back to her. "I'm sure you wore it better than I am," Emma retorts, keeping pace with her better than the men she'd danced with. Regina is leading firmly, guiding her steps so she's nowhere near her toes, and this dancing thing is actually kind of enjoyable when it's Regina pulling her close and moving away and circling around her.

Regina's lips curl upward faintly when they're close again. "It is quite striking on you," she allows. "Particularly with that exquisite mask. Is that a swan's feather?" One hand reaches for the mask, her hand burning against Emma's cheek as she inspects it.

Emma shrugs, bare shoulders bumping up and down and a smirk threatening to break loose. "I'm a lady," she informs Regina. "I have no time to discuss my clothing with my maids."

Regina does laugh then, little jeweled peals that aren't loud enough to make it past the two of them. "Forgive me, my lady." She gives Emma an exaggerated curtsy in response. "I would never imply otherwise."

They're dancing to the side now, Regina having steered them further back from where Emma had been heading, but Emma finds she doesn't mind. They're moving in circles, Regina twirling Emma around now, too, and her hands are exactly as soft as Emma recalls, the despair on her face gone for the moment and replaced by their playful flirtation. "What brings you to this ball?" Regina asks. "The handsome prince? The masked company?" Her voice lowers a register. "The king's full coffers?"

Emma purses her lips. "What, do you think I'm just a common thief now?"

"Lady Swan," Regina murmurs, and her voice is low enough now that it could be husky and seductive on a more skillful woman but instead it's just soft and playful and makes Emma lick her lips nervously nonetheless. "You are certainly, at the least, uncommon." She offers her a shy smile, her eyes nearly glowing under her mask, and Emma is captivated all over again.

"I'm touched." But she's flushing anyway, her cheeks red from more than just the exertion of dancing, and she can't tear her eyes away from Regina's. Regina has seen more of her than anyone but the Merry Men, knows exactly who she is and has seen her without her cloak, now, too, and she can't tamp down the dread that follows that knowledge.

As far as she knows, Regina hasn't told anyone that the famed Swan is a woman, but she can't earn trust with that when Emma doesn't have any trust to offer. And now she's exposed before her, all but her face open to the queen, and she can feel herself getting much too close, alarm bells ringing with every step she takes with Regina.

It's almost a relief when small hands break between Regina and her and the adolescent girl from earlier is beaming up at them both. "You've met my stepmother!" she says, delighted as she twirls with them.

And if Emma hadn't spent far too much time staring at Regina, she probably wouldn't have caught the way that she falters at the touch of the girl. She doesn't stop dancing for a moment, guiding them both into a new three-way dance, but her face loses its glow abruptly, a new sheen of plastic smiles washing away whatever real enjoyment she'd been having before her stepdaughter had arrived.

"I never did catch your name," the princess says, oblivious to any changes in the queen. "I'm Snow of the White kingdom, and this is my stepmother, Queen Regina." She smiles up at Regina with unabashed adoration, and Emma feels Regina's hand tighten in hers, then relax.

"Yes, what is your name?" Regina echoes, turning to her with a smile so bright and empty that it's almost painful to see.

And she could have made something up, kept another tiny piece of herself guarded from this woman, but there's so much dishonesty around her right now- in Regina's eyes, in this kingdom and the castle itself and the boy who styles himself as prince- that she finds that she has little patience for more lies right now. "Emma of Locksley," she offers, recalling for the second time that night the home of one of her earlier noblewoman caretakers. "Just Emma to you," she offers, glancing briefly at little Snow before her eyes are back on Regina's.

"Is that so?" Regina's voice is almost a whisper, and Emma dips her head in acknowledgement before spinning away from both of them, embarrassed at how vulnerable she's made herself.

* * *

Alan-a-Dale has vanished from the ballroom, as far as she can tell. She imagines that he's found riches of his own in some lady's purse- however those riches may have shown themselves- and he's either been thrown from the castle or is entertaining in his own inimitable way. She doesn't care. She'd never wanted an escort tonight, anyway.

Her agenda with King George is hers alone, and she doesn't like to bring others into it, particularly when it's as foolhardy as this mission is. She's banking on a lot of things- an unguarded throne room, her own ability to discern real jewels from the fake, and an old memory that might not even be reliable. At best, she'll have a particularly lucrative trophy and King George will be furious. At worst, she'll be thrown into a dungeon or worse. She wouldn't wish that on anyone.

She hurries through the hallway to the throne room, peering across the hall as though she's searching for something, and offers the guard- a single guard, looking longingly toward the buffet tables visible from the ballroom- a nervous smile. "I'm sorry, I'm looking for my brother. I thought I saw him come this way?"

"Haven't seen him," the guard grunts.

She frowns, pouting under her mask. "He went in that room, I know it. Would you escort me, sir?" She stretches out her arm and keeps the pout in place, licking her lips reflexively and watching with satisfaction as the guard watches the swipe of her tongue. She's never made for a convincing ingénue, but this man doesn't seem perturbed by her clumsiness when she grabs his arm and they step into the room.

He's a bit more perturbed when she angles her body to take his weight and flips him over her, sending him crashing to the floor, but by then it's already too late. She grabs a poker from a coat of arms on the wall, swinging it at his helmet with a loud bang, and his eyes roll back in his head and he falls back further, unconscious. "Sorry about that," she says, dropping the poker beside him.

The room is empty, the king and all his guards busy with the ball- and King George is not a rich king who can afford so many servants to keep his throne room when he's trying to impress a few dozen kingdoms. Emma knows that the coffers of the kingdom are rapidly emptying, and James's early marriage is one of his last-ditch efforts to keep the kingdom from losing everything within a decade. It's why he wears a counterfeit crown, too afraid of his crown jewels being damaged or stolen in a crowd like this one.

Unfortunately for him, Emma's spent years learning the difference between real gems and even the most skilled fakes, and she's known that he's been hiding his crown for nearly a year now. And she also thinks she knows where it might be thanks to a fading memory of her last time in this very room.

She moves to circle the king's throne, tracing the gold leaf pattern that's woven across the sides and back of it until her fingers touch one leaf that depresses under her fingers. A square of metal below it slides into the chair, and there it is- the king's true crown.

She reaches for it when something spews out at her, bright and gold and blinding. _Fairy dust?_ she has enough time to wonder, and then she's struggling but frozen in place, bound by the fairy dust that guarded the crown and unable to escape it.

And across the room, the guard stirs in his sleep and lets out a low groan. She stares wild-eyed, fighting against the fairy dust that glows around her midsection, trying to raise her hands to push against the throne but it's in vain. She's trapped here, awaiting her discovery and imprisonment and probably her execution, and there's no way to escape this snare.

"What are you doing?" demands a voice from the doorway. Her mask is off and her eyes are wide as she stares at Emma, and Emma can't help but drink in the sight of Regina as the other girl stands across the room. She might be the one to call for more guards, but she doesn't seem very interested in leaving or exposing Emma at all.

"What do you think?" Emma offers tiredly. "This is kind of what I do, remember?"

Regina bites her lip, glancing once at the guard and then back at Emma, the gold of her magical prison barely gleaming from behind the throne. "I think you need some help," she says decisively, walking to Emma.

Regina takes her hand and the fairy dust loosens around her arm, though it still holds her in place. "You should know better than to steal from a king in his home," she says, reproach in her voice. "Why must you rob him, anyway? Don't you have enough from what you took from me last week?"

Emma shrugs, feeling suddenly self-conscious. "It's not about the money," she mumbles. "I don't…we don't keep it anyway. That's our thing. We steal from the rich and give to the poor." She squeezes Regina's hand. "You should go. If they find you here, you'll be in just as much trouble as I am."

Regina shrugs dismissively. "I don't care about that." Her eyes cloud over, and her face is stiff and distant with indifference that can't conceal her pain.

"You look beautiful tonight." The words tear out of her mouth, unbidden and irrelevant except that it's all she can think about now that Regina's mask is off, her dark eyes highlighted by smoky makeup and her dress matching the inviting crimson of her lips. And if she's going to spend the rest of her life in a prison cell, then maybe this is the most important thing she can tell anyone first.

"Oh." Regina's eyes round and then she has a hand on Emma's mask again, her forefinger and her thumb stroking the softness of the swan feather. "Can I take this off, Lady Swan?" she asks quietly.

"It really is Emma," Emma feels obliged to tell her.

Regina smiles at her, sunshine parting the darkness that shrouds her. "Oh, I know." Her fingers have moved to explore the curves of Emma's face, tracing her chin and the arc of her jaw up to her hair.

And Emma is afraid, even now, even when this might be the last moment she's free in her life. "Please don't take off my mask," she whispers, and Regina looks at her for a long moment, yearning written across her face as she winds her hand through Emma's curls. Her thumb scrapes the side of the mask, dipping under for just a moment, and Emma inhales slowly. "Regina…"

The other girl frowns, not bothering to hide her disappointment. "You don't trust me."

Emma manages a smile. "Don't take it personally. I don't really trust anyone."

"What about your brotherhood of men?" Regina's thumb is still half under her mask, stroking the skin concealed there, and when she pulls it away Emma can't stop a soft sigh of loss. "Aren't they loyal to you and each other alone?"

"You've done your research." She can imagine Regina, alone in a castle with a stepdaughter she clearly dislikes and life she wants nothing more than to escape, subtly inquiring from her guards and ladies-in-waiting about the Merry Men and their leader. (And maybe there has been a time or two that Swan Hood has ridden past that same castle with curious eyes while on the road this past week. King Leopold's kingdom _is _only a day's ride from Sherwood Forest, after all. Of course she'd have reason to pass by.) "You might have noticed though-" She gestures to herself with the hand restrained by the fairy dust. "Not really a brother."

Regina laughs, dropping her hand from Emma's, and the fairy dust around her falls to the ground with a silent burst of color and a startled "Oh!" from the queen. There's another moan from the guard at the cry and Regina hisses, "We have to go!" and yanks at Emma's hand again.

She hesitates, letting go of Regina to crouch down and inspect the crown's hiding place. "I just need to get this."

"No, you don't! It's just another toy for you to barter off, and it's _not worth it_." Regina levels a reproving glare at her. "You are _such_ a child."

"I'm sev- I'm eighteen!" she protests. "How old are you, anyway?" _Too young to be a queen,_ she thinks despite herself, and doesn't explain why her face falls when she looks back up at Regina.

But Regina's eyeing her oddly as she drags her away, and Emma steers them in the opposite direction of the ballroom toward the end of the hall. There's an exit here to the stables, and she can't take any chances if the guard wakes up and remembers the girl in the dress.

"You really are so young," Regina says when they're safely outside, shivering in the cold in their dresses. "I hadn't thought– How did you become the leader of a group of lawless outlaws?"

"Mostly by accident," Emma admits. "I'd wanted to run with the Merry Men for years now, but they'd been…reluctant to let me come along." Little John had been the closest thing she'd had to a guardian for the past three and a half years, and she'd cut off half her hair and bound her breasts and he'd still insisted that she stay behind with the other women in the camp. She'd raged and whined and threatened him, but he'd remained resolute, so she'd stolen one of Will's oldest cloaks and started following them on their carriage raids anyway. She's better with a bow than any of them and she'd saved them a few botched attacks before they'd ever known that it had been Emma who'd been their mysterious backup.

It had taken months before they'd managed to catch her and uncloak her, but by then she'd become their most visible icon- a source of frustration for royals throughout the kingdoms, and a point of pride for the poorest townspeople. Little John had conceded that she be allowed to join the Merry Men, and they'd all reluctantly deferred to her from then on.

"If Little John wasn't so respected, I don't think anyone would take me seriously," she concludes. Regina's been listening with rapt attention, their hands swinging together between them as they walk through the castle grounds. She's said much too much and she can't stop, not when Regina's face is turned to her like she's the most fascinating person she's ever met. "Between him and the legends that have been cropping up about me- did you know that I once fought off an ogre with my bare hands?"

"I did not." Regina's eyes sparkle with amusement as she lifts Emma's hand to inspect it. "This hand?"

"My hood never even fell from my face," Emma says modestly.

Regina laughs, and it's a little wistful. "I can't imagine what it would be like, to change your life like that. Even if it's only to become a thief-" And she's frowning down at Emma for a moment, disapproval warring with longing- "It seems wonderful."

"It's okay," Emma mumbles, suddenly uncomfortable. She might live in a tent in the woods and Regina in a castle, but there's no mistaking the anguish that accompanies Regina for any kind of joy at her riches. "There must be something you can do, too. To change things."

Regina doesn't look at her, the girl replaced by a distant queen at once. "I do what I can." She drops Emma's hand suddenly, wrapping her arms around her waist. "There's no more happiness for me in this life."

She says it with such certainty that Emma shudders. "That can't be true."

There's a ghost of a smile on Regina's face when she turns to look at her. "I wish that were so."

They're rounding the castle now, walking past the stables toward the exit where they'd run from, and Emma can see a dozen guards patrolling the area, ostensibly searching for the girl who'd nearly stolen the king's crown. "We should go back inside. I don't want you getting in any trouble and starting a war." She peeks at Regina through her eyelashes and is pleased to see her roll her eyes in response.

"Go home, Lady Swan," she orders as they stand there. "I won't have you caught in petty thievery by a king as cruel as this one, either."

She scowls, half serious about it. She wants to stay, even at this awful ball with too much dancing and too many dresses and not enough women at the buffet. It hasn't been a bad night, and it might be worth a try to sneak back into the throne room without Regina and show her just how adept a thief Emma is. (Regina might be impressed, but Emma's pretty sure that she'll just get a lecture out of it. Still, Regina lecturing her would probably be nearly as fun as Regina laughing at her.) "You can't tell me what to-"

"_Emma_." It's the first time her name's been on Regina's lips, and it makes something come loose and puddle deep in her stomach. "You need to go."

She's saying, "Okay," before she can argue again, something about the combination of those eyes on her and that use of her name leaving her obedient to Regina in an instant; and she's _such_ an idiot but it doesn't stop her from following Regina's command, arms wrapped around her as she walks as though it can somehow ward off the queen who's already under her skin.

She's not entirely sure she wants to.


	3. Chapter 3

**Nah, I didn't see the bts pictures and stay up until 4 AM writing this last night. That's ridiculous. (8**

**This chapter borrows a bit of dialogue from 2x05: The Doctor. Also probably the darkest chapter of the story. Regina's at a place with a lot of power and instability and it all gets very twisted for a while, but I promise I'll make it better.**

**...eventually.**

* * *

Regina and Snow have never looked more like sisters, dark-haired and breathless and flushed from the wind that whips past them as Emma circles them on horseback. They're in their castle's gardens, Regina holding a hand in front of Snow to keep her back from the dust Beetle's kicked up, and there are guards coming closer as Emma makes one last revolution around them and snatches the hat off Regina's head.

_Lady Swan!_ Regina mouths, but she's laughing silently, half-curtsying as Emma settles the hat onto her own hooded head and tips it jauntily.

"Was that very valuable?" Snow is asking as she rides off. "The Hooded Swan, here! In my father's castle! I can't imagine what would have brought him to this place."

Emma can just barely hear Regina's returning snicker over the sound of hoofbeats and she grins to herself as she rides into the woods, following a narrow path she'd only found yesterday. The week spent scouting out Leopold's castle had been more than worth it just for the delight on Regina's face when she'd come riding out of the woods in the middle of the morning.

She should have taken more than a hat, maybe, she considers when she studies it later. It's pretty and there's some beading that might be worth something, but it's not enough to appease her curious men, who'd been watching her with searching eyes when she'd ridden off from camp alone these past few days. It's not that she has anything to hide, and there _are_ certain benefits to having a secret path to a king's castle.

But she hadn't had anything on her mind but Regina's face when she'd ride out from the woods to greet her, the surprise and the delight she'd anticipated and gotten. She rubs her knuckles against the side of her neck, feeling warmth spread outward and bubble within her chest.

_Worth it_, she thinks again, and she's already making plans for her next visit.

* * *

This time, she rides around nearly the entire castle before she sees the white-clad figure in the gardens, kneeling beside a small tree with her hands pressed to its trunk. She thinks she sees it glow for a moment, but when she shakes her head the bluish tinge is gone and Regina is straightening, thin shoulders stiffening under her dress. "I don't need an escort," she snaps before she turns, and Emma casts an appreciative eye at the way her hair sweeps down along the curves of her back. "Go away."

Emma halts Beetle in his place, glancing around to make sure that there are no eyes on the queen and her cloaked visitor. The castle grounds are all but empty in this area- which is why, she suspects, Regina is here to begin with. "Why is it you're always telling me to leave? I'm going to get a complex."

Regina spins around so quickly that her dress rises around her, then settles. "Emma!" Excitement wars with worry on her face. "You shouldn't be here. If they see you–"

Emma eyes her speculatively. "Hm. Give me your necklace then." She hops off of Beetle, reaching over between them to finger the necklace in question. Her knuckles brush against the bare skin of Regina's collarbone, probably incidentally. It's a very nice collarbone. "Tell them I threatened you and robbed you like the evil bastard I am."

Regina rolls her eyes. "And just what are you planning on doing with your plunder, outlaw?" Emma's fingers stroke the place where the necklace dips and her breath hitches. "Will you feed a starving family? Donate it to the nearest temple? Strangle King George in his sleep?"

"You know me so well." Regina's dress is a modest cut, high above her breasts and down to her feet, but the necklace falls below it and Emma follows the curve determinedly, pulling the dress down ever so slightly.

Regina grabs it with a trembling hand. "You are a little evil after all, aren't you," she breathes.

"I might even be a bastard," Emma smirks, curling her hand around Regina's. "Who knows?"

"You don't know?" Their hands fall together but don't release, and now it's Regina who's stroking Emma's hand with her thumb, leaving a tingling trail across her skin.

Emma shrugs under her cloak. "I don't know anything about my parents. I was…taken in by others. I know there'd been some kind of sale for me, but the people who'd bought me as a baby gave me up after a few years and I spent most of my childhood shuttled from family to family." It's easy to force herself to be dispassionate about it now, to rattle off the facts she knows instead of dwelling on old worthlessness and non-belonging. She doesn't choke on a single word.

But Regina already knows her better than she'd ever expected, and the hand on hers tightens and the queen's eyes darken. "I'm so sorry, Emma." And then they're staring at each other for a moment, Emma's eyes concealed under the darkness of her hood but Regina finding them shining through anyway, and she hesitates for just long enough for Regina's arm to snake under her cloak and wrap around her waist in a halfway hug.

"It's okay," she mutters, angling herself next to Regina so their positioning is a little less awkward. "It's not a big deal." And she's uncomfortable again, enough to blurt out, "Your parents kept you and look what happened to you." Which is probably insensitive, but at least it makes Regina stop looking at her like…she's some lost little girl who never had anything. She's doing fine.

Regina's arm relaxes against her, but she doesn't let go. "How very callous of you," she says dryly. "Is it that difficult for you to accept some compassion?"

"Pity," Emma corrects, licking her lips. "I have a good life. I don't need your pity."

Regina's fingers dance along her waist, just above the line of her trousers. "Oh, and you don't pity me?" She doesn't let go of her, doesn't turn from her sapling to look at Emma. "Why are you here, Lady Swan?"

"Wh-What?"

"Here. This castle. Why are you here?" And for a moment Emma can see Regina's mother in her, in the steel that firms her expression when her eyes are looking away. "Is this only a small concession to a miserable girl? Why do you bother with me at all?"

"That's not what-" Emma freezes, utterly stymied by this new line of questioning. Why _is_ she here? What is she doing, planning new reasons to see Regina as often as she can? She'd camped out alone in the woods around the castle last night just so she could be here in the morning and wait for Regina to emerge from the castle all day.

It's not pity, she knows that much if only from the way she can't stop thinking about Regina and the way she'd looked in that dress at the ball. It has nothing to do with pity or even compassion. This is for Regina but it's just as much for her, for the tentative friendship they've formed and the way something feels warm and free in her chest when she's around the queen.

But she doesn't know how to say any of that and she doesn't even know if she should, so instead she pulls away from Regina and moves back to stand against Beetle. Regina turns to stare at her at last, and her expression is so determined that it hurts. "Why won't you let me see your face?"

"I-" It's too dangerous. Regina already knows enough about her, and Emma relies too much on her anonymity to risk being identified by a queen- a queen who seems to hate her position, yes, but a queen nonetheless. She won't have Regina any more involved in any of this than she is already and she won't take that risk just to appease Regina. It's all logic and protection and there's no reason why Regina's question would create this lump in her throat, why she feels like she might be undone because of the brown eyes fixed on her.

"What are you afraid of?" Regina whispers, reaching for her hood. "Emma…" The material is between her fingers now and Emma is rooted to the spot, unable to push Regina away or to coax her forward and unable to figure out which she wants.

Regina waits, and Emma stays silent, her teeth clamped on her lower lip to keep it from quivering.

"Alright," Regina says slowly, and there's no masking the frustration on her face. "I'd better go inside now. Snow will be searching for me." This time she's the one to leave, to turn and tread slowly back toward the castle as Emma watches from beside Beetle, safe under her hood and feeling unnaturally exposed anyway.

* * *

She visits King George's kingdom and sets a ceremonial tree planted for James's eighteenth birthday on fire in an attempt to distract herself, but even that is cut short by a dark-skinned knight she's never seen before who nearly catches up to her while James rides beside him and looks amused at the whole situation. She sets up ambushes on the king's road and brings in enough loot that her men stop sneaking bewildered glances at her and after a week and a half of pretending that she doesn't miss Regina, she's riding right back to the White kingdom and its queen.

She pulls her hood on as she mounts Beetle and refuses to wonder if Regina will even want to see her.

They're less than a mile from the castle when Beetle suddenly rears back, his golden mane whipping against her face as he neighs a protest. "Dammit! Beetle–" But then she sees the movement in the trees, a dark horse- no, a _unicorn_, but a black one like she's never seen before- whinnying in terror as it rises and falls.

The thief inside her is immediately calculating how much she might make from the sale of a black unicorn. Or how she'd look perched atop it, riding through the streets in her white cloak with a massive creature like that. She grins, sliding off of Beetle and tying him to the closest tree before she slips through the trees to get a little closer to the unicorn.

"Now, show me what you've learned," says an odd, creaky voice from the clearing where the unicorn stands, and Emma hesitates, moving closer with all the stealth she can muster. "Immobilize it."

And she manages to get a good view of the clearing just in time to watch Regina raise her hands determinedly and trap the unicorn in place with a surge of blue magic. She's beaming, eyes alight and innocent and eager, and Emma can only stare from the shadows with horror.

_Magic_. Regina is using magic, and Emma takes an involuntary step backward, her mouth falling open as she does.

She's afraid to move, to call the attention of the man who's training Regina. He fills her with an odd sort of dread, a familiarity she can't place that frightens her even as Regina smiles at him and nearly preens under his praise. He looks inhuman and terrible and dark, and she can't bear the sight of him so close to Regina's brightness.

She watches with barely contained dread as he attempts to drive Regina to take the unicorn's heart (Like what her mother had done to her true love, he says, and Emma swallows at that pronouncement) and Regina can't, of course, because she's _Regina _and she's not her mother and she'll never be– but then the man-creature is taking it instead and giving it to Regina and it's glowing in her hands and Emma takes a breath so strained that it sounds like a sob.

"Crush it," the man says. Regina doesn't, and Emma nearly barrels through the trees right then to defend her from her teacher.

"Do you want me to teach you or not?" the man asks, and Regina says her _Yes _so quickly that Emma stops again.

"What's holding you back?" the man asks, and Regina says nothing as both the man and the unicorn vanish in a puff of magic, leaving the queen standing alone in the clearing, her hand rising to cover her mouth. Her eyes are glassy with tears and she's staring at the hand that had held the heart as though it contains the answers to every question she's ever had and she's let it all slip away.

Emma starts toward her again, the new wariness of _Regina with magic _battling the sorrow of _Regina is crying _and losing against the tears just as Regina drops her hand and runs for the woods.

She crashes into Emma and they both topple to the ground, Emma holding her hood in place automatically as she does. "Emma," Regina says dully. "Are you spying on me?" She looks accusing and her face is still wet with tears, and there's no smile in her eyes this time, no eagerness that lights up her face when she sees Emma; and Emma bites back her disappointment and comes back defensive instead.

"I wasn't- You're learning magic," she says accusingly. Regina had been sprawled out half on top of her, and she pulls away so quickly at that charge that she nearly yanks down Emma's cloak in the process. "Is _that_ how the fairy dust released me at James's ball?"

Regina shrugs moodily, and Emma's reminded of the girl she'd first seen in a carriage months ago, wearing an engagement ring and closed off to the world. "But your mother used magic," she says, not comprehending. She can't reconcile the Regina who'd frozen that unicorn with the Regina who'd stayed defiant in her mother's magical trap, not like this. "That man said she–"

"Don't," Regina says, and her voice is trembling like she's going to cry. "Don't talk about that."

But she does anyway, because this is a piece of Regina that she's never seen before and she pushes too hard, longs for more and more even as she refuses to give up any more of herself to Regina. "Who was she? He? Your…your true love." She swallows again, hating those words as she hears them. True love is the stuff of nobles and the wealthy, those who can afford to go around having the love they write legends of. The idea of Regina having had it makes her nauseous and angry and devastates her in ways she can't entertain right now.

And Regina caves, her refusal forgotten as she sits up and pulls her knees close to her. "His name was Daniel." And she's already shaking, already nearly in tears. "He was- He was the only one who made life around my mother bearable. We were going to run away together when Mother accepted the king's proposal for me."

Emma shifts to sit beside her, touching her shoulder with a tentative hand. Regina folds into her at once, burying her face in the crook of Emma's arm and muffling the rest of her words in it. "Snow White told my mother and she killed him. Gave us her blessing, then tore out his heart and crushed it."

And her falseness and her pain around Snow is clear now, an explanation as horrifying as anything else that's become of Regina's life until now. "I'm so sorry." She hurts for Regina even as a selfish part of her is almost relieved in that moment, glad about something she has no business being glad about.

"I couldn't do it," Regina is saying into her cloak, and it takes a moment before Emma realizes that she's talking about the unicorn. "I can't become her. Can't do the horrible things she did. I just wanted to be happy."

"And magic makes you happy?" Emma demands, pushing ever forward. "I saw what your mother did to you after you sent me away. You think that kind of power will make you _happy_?"

The words burst from Regina like they're her final lifeline. "It'll make me free!" she chokes out. "Emma, don't you understand? It's the only power I have. The only control I have over my own life. So if it's magic, then yes, I'll let magic make me happy." She's finally crying, sobbing into Emma's shoulder as Emma wraps an arm around her, and when she looks up, her eyes are alarmingly vacant. "I don't care about anything else."

"I could make you happy," Emma says, and fumbles her words when Regina pulls back to stare at her with dark eyes. "I mean…you could run away with me. Come back to my camp and the Merry Men." It's ludicrous to even entertain the idea, but she can feel her own excitement building at the thought of it. Regina around every day, Regina sharing her tent with her and riding with her and _happy_ at last. "No one will ever know. You'd be safe. I'd take care of you."

Regina is still staring at her, her face very still as she sits too close, millimeters away from Emma's hooded face. And then her hands slide up Emma's torso, Emma wobbly under her touch as she reaches the edge of the hood. "Show me your face, Lady Swan," she says softly.

And if this is all Regina needs from her, then maybe she can give it. Maybe she craves giving it away to her, if it means that she might be able to keep Regina. She's lost everyone else she's ever cared about, short of Little John, and maybe this is all she needs to make sure that Regina stays. "Okay," she whispers. "Okay."

Regina pushes the hood back slowly, like she isn't sure Emma might not have some terrible third eye or growth concealed under her cloak, and Emma manages a smile as her face is revealed to Regina. "Oh," Regina breathes, gazing at her, brushing stray hairs out of Emma's face. Her hair is tied back but falling out of its clip, and Regina winds her fingers through it and tugs it free, spreading Emma's hair around her face.

Emma brushes a hand through it, feeling suddenly self-conscious. "So, uh…this is me." She's probably all grimy from riding and crawling through the woods, less than presentable especially near Regina, who's got the same kind of outfit as Emma's on but wears it as well as a coronation dress.

"Emma." Regina's eyes are glittering through drying tears, and she presses her palm to Emma's cheek. "My Emma."

_Yours_, she almost says, leaning into Regina's touch, and the queen brushes a kiss across her forehead, heedless of the dirt that must be crusted into it by now.

And then she's settling back down and Emma licks her lips as her eyes flutter closed, feeling Regina's breath so close that she can nearly taste it. She inhales, scenting the woods and perfume and horses and salty tears, and Regina's lips are just grazing hers when there's another strangled sob from Regina.

Emma's eyes fly open as Regina recoils, just as she had from the unicorn, and there's an identical look of pain on her face when she pulls away and covers her face. "Regina-" Emma starts, but Regina's shaking her head, anguished.

"I shouldn't– I can't– I have to go." She turns around and flees through the woods, leaving Emma still sitting on the ground with her hood down and her heart pounding.

* * *

She rides back to Sherwood Forest and fires arrows into a target until she's hit the mark every single time and at least two of them have gouged holes through her board into the tree behind it. Little John stands silently behind her and she ignores him with extra determination, thwacking a final arrow into her target so hard that it splinters the wood above its point.

She doesn't think about Regina. She _doesn't_.

She rides out to King Midas's castle the next morning alone. It's much further and riskier than the local kingdoms, but lucrative enough a visit that she makes the trip anyway. She steals as much gold as Beetle can carry and makes the trip back home in a day and a half without stopping more than once for a brief rest.

She's stretched out on her sleeping mat during her break, Beetle resting beside her, when she hears a puff of wind and Regina is suddenly there, sitting beside her. "Are you real?" she asks, groggily squinting at the dark-haired girl.

"No." Regina shakes her head vehemently. "No, I'm not here. You're dreaming." Soft fingers smooth out her hair and caress her cheek, and Emma's sure it must be a dream, then. "Emma?"

"Yeah?" She closes her eyes again, enjoying Dream Regina's ministrations. She wonders if this Regina would run away if she kisses her.

Regina's fingers hesitate for a moment. "How do you stay so…so you?"

"So me?"

"You're a thief and an outlaw." Regina untangles Emma's hair, spreading it around her in a halo of blonde. "You run around with a bow and arrow and you _must_ have killed people, haven't you? You've done dark things." She persists before Emma can ponder the accuracy of that statement. "I think if…if my mother had done those same things, they would have consumed her. Made her someone else."

"Because of magic?"

"Because of power." The other girl drops her hands to press them to her stomach, shivering in the cold like this isn't a weird dreamscape. "I'm afraid, Emma," she whispers. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to be like you. You need to tell me how to be good when there's nothing left. When there's no one–" She stops abruptly, sniffling back tears.

Emma yawns, struggling to focus on Regina's face. "I dunno," she finally mumbles. "This is just how things turned out for me." She'd once been a thief because it had been the only way to survive, and later because it had been the only way she'd be accepted by the Merry Men. "I'm not that good." She gives to the poor because she has money and no interest in it and they need it. And she steals from the rich because she's an angry teenager who'd been burned by one too many nobles. Maybe one day she'll learn to be more noble, to see philanthropy as her duty instead of just a bit of fun. But she's not there yet, and it's exhausting to contemplate changing her mindset so completely when it's her whole _life_.

She flushes, ashamed at her own selfishness, and opens her eyes to stare up at Dream Regina. "You're good, too. Better than me. You haven't told anyone about me." Another thought occurs to her, and she tries to sit up before a soft hand is laid against her stomach, pressing her down. "And you stay in that castle and take care of Snow, even after she hurt your Daniel." There's a sharp intake at the name, and Emma smiles blearily at Dream Regina. "You called me your Emma, do you remember?"

"I shouldn't have."

She frowns. "But I wanted…" And just as quickly, the protest is gone and replaced by renewed exhaustion. "I'm just so tired." She closes her eyes again and gentle fingers trace the lines of her face.

"Go back to sleep," Regina says softly, her nails scraping against Emma's lips and staying there. "I'm sorry I disturbed you."

"I thought this was a dream." She forces her eyes open again, but now Regina's gone, faded back into her unconscious mind along with her questions.

Beetle is up again three hours later and she finishes her ride home to the Merry Men, pushing thoughts of the dream from her head as she does.

* * *

She's practicing her archery again once the excitement from her loot wears down and it's been distributed to a small town just an hour away from King Leopold's castle. She'd been able to see it from far, towering over the kingdom, and now she's frustrated about everything and nothing and desperate to distract herself from thoughts of Regina.

They'd almost kissed. Emma had _wanted_ to kiss her. And Regina had run away.

She'd shown Regina her face. Regina knows her name now, knows her face, knows nearly everything there is to know about Emma. And she'd looked at her and kissed her forehead and found her wanting, as everyone before her had done in the past.

"Dammit!" She draws back the string of her arrow and lets it fly at an innocent rabbit running past, spearing it perfectly with her single shot. She doesn't know why Regina had run. Maybe she'd forgotten something back at the castle. Maybe she'd seen something in the woods. Maybe…maybe…

Dream Regina had been right. Regina shouldn't have called Emma hers if she didn't want her to begin with. She shouldn't have looked at her like she'd _wanted _to come back with Emma, like she'd been tempted to leave her home of luxury and comfort to go camp out in the woods with a thief. She shouldn't have…

No. _Emma _is at fault here. She'd been fool enough to chase around a queen, making overtures and holding hands and spilling all the secrets of her past, and now she's paying the price for trusting too easily. Now she feels sick when she thinks too much and her head hurts all the time and she just wants to _surrender_, to hide in the woods like she had as an orphan child and have a long cry about Regina and her self-indulgent belief that she'd meant something more to her.

Regina had had true love in her grasp once; why would she ever settle for Emma?

She inhales, slowing her breathing so she can't cry, and methodically collects her arrows, stalking past her men into the forest beyond their camp. She ignores the curiosity on their faces, even when Arthur mutters in a low voice, "Has she met a lad?" and there are guffaws following her into the underbrush.

She's still walking a half hour later, and she hasn't wept. So she won't, she vows. She can't cry over stupidity, she can just learn from her mistakes and never trust like that again. She has more important things to–

Regina appears, quite abruptly, in the woods in front of her.

"Lady Swan," she says, and Emma can only stare. The woodsy vests and long white dresses are gone now and Regina's dressed all in black leather with an accompanying cape, her hair pulled sharply from her face and piled atop her head. She looks…she looks _really_, really good. And really, really not Regina-like at all, like she'd donned this mask this afternoon and turned all her softness into the harshness of reality.

Emma manages a, "What happened?" before Regina is striding toward her, eyes focused and determined, and when she claims Emma's lips now, it is unmistakably a claim. _My Emma_, she's saying, nipping at Emma's lips and drawing her closer. Two fingers hooked onto Emma's pants, yanking her closer. A trail of kisses down Emma's neck. _Mine. _

And…_oh_. Emma gasps and pulls her tighter, kissing her back with the same urgency. Whatever the change in costume might have meant, this still feels like Regina under it all, Regina whom she's found too many opportunities to touch– but never like this until now. Regina who pushes back against her, rigid and stubborn as always, Regina who's struggling to dominate her even as Emma pushes back and her skin is on _fire_, hot and sweating already from the way Regina is sliding her hands all over her, laying claim to every uncovered inch of her like a conquering queen.

She thinks she might have filtered out the world for a moment, shut out everything but the taste of Regina's mouth and the skin exploring her skin, lost in sensations that are so much _more_ than ever before. This feels right. This is something she'd happily spend the rest of her life doing and never look back, and she loses herself in it in a perfect moment.

When she comes back to reality, it's because Regina is unbuttoning Emma's shirt with little tingles of magic, pulling it open to slide her hand across every bit of skin exposed. Emma sighs with anticipation, sliding her thigh between Regina's legs. She's done this before but it's never felt like this. Never been with someone who matters. Never with Regina. The thought crosses her mind that they might be moving too fast, but that vanishes the moment Regina palms her left breast, flicking the nipple with her thumb, and Emma presses into her with a sob. "Regina…"

And then, abruptly, Regina's hand isn't quite on her breast but it isn't off of it, either, and Emma is suddenly numb below her hand. She can't feel anything except there's an odd pain in her chest, a tugging that makes her choke and hits her core at the same time, like there are phantom fingers delving into her from the inside out. _What's happening to-_ she tries to say, but the pain is too strong and she can't remember how to speak, how to pull away, how to do anything but stare wide-eyed at Regina as the other girl pulls her hands out of her chest, a glowing heart in her grasp.

"It's so easy," Regina whispers, her own eyes on Emma's heart as well. She squeezes it and Emma chokes, her whole chest compressing and tears springing to her eyes. "I could take you now. Do anything I wanted with you. I can do anything," she repeats wonderingly, and Emma can't breathe, can't process any of this.

There's enough of the innocent Regina still within her, the delight and exhilaration still so clear and familiar in her eyes that Emma wants to vomit. "What are- what are you do-" The words come out in gasps as Regina turns the heart in her hands and Emma doubles over onto the ground, crying out again.

Regina gazes down at her, and then back to the heart she's so entranced by. "It's so _easy_," she murmurs. "I never thought it would be so simple. Just reach in…and no one can control me again. No one has power over me but myself." Her face softens in a strange perversion of the Regina Emma had known before today. This Regina…this isn't her Regina, no matter how much she looks like her. This _can't_ be Regina. Whatever's happened over the past two weeks, it couldn't have changed her like this.

"Come here, Emma," Regina says, and her legs automatically unbend and walk toward Regina again. She looks away, unwilling to see the perversely tender expression on the queen's face. "Look at me," Regina coaxes, and she has no choice but to look. "You really could be mine like this," she whispers. "No one could ever take your heart away, if I have it. No one could crush it and keep you from me forever." She kisses the tip of Emma's nose and doesn't seem to notice when Emma recoils. "I would never let you go."

She won't beg. She doesn't cower before nobles or kings or men, and she won't start now, even though whatever heart is still inside her is shattering with every moment Regina holds her heart. She'd wanted Regina to want her, had spent two weeks hating herself for not being enough, but not like this. Never like this. "Please," she whispers, and it's not a plea, because she doesn't beg. She'd never be brought to her knees by this twisted version of Regina. It's not begging. "Please let me go." Not. Begging.

She doesn't cry, either, but there are tears spilling down her face now and she can still feel Regina as a phantom inside her and this is all so wrong, so fucked up beyond imagination, and she loathes her own naiveté at trusting Regina in the first place. "I hate you," she mumbles, and she doesn't know whom she's talking to anymore.

Regina's eyes widen, not privy to the same clarity as Emma, and she squeezes the heart again unconsciously as she gapes at Emma. Agony rips through Emma and she drops to the ground, _please-no-please-Regina _a litany that she doesn't know if she's chanting aloud or if it's rattling around in her head, and she rocks backward against a tree, slamming her head against it to distract from the pain in her chest.

The figure that bends down in front of her is blurred through her tears and she wipes at them angrily, blinks them away until she can stare at Regina again as the other girl crouches in front of her. There's the same wetness mirrored in her eyes and she's weeping as she pushes Emma's heart back into her chest and sags to the ground in front of her, and she's sobbing _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't know why- I shouldn't have- I'm so sorry, oh god, Emma, what's happening to me?_ And then Emma's throwing up all over Regina's terrible outfit and Regina is just staring and pleading with her and letting her hands get covered in Emma's lunch without moving them away.

And Emma scoots back until she's flat against the trunk of the tree and she doesn't cry anymore. She's not going to cry again, so instead she watches with blank eyes as Regina huddles into a ball and sobs and Emma–

Emma just watches.


	4. Chapter 4

**The flashbacks from Quite A Common Fairy take place sometime near the end of this chapter (as you will see p obviously, lol). The one downside from seeing all this exclusively from Emma's perspective is that we miss vital details that the show has given us from Regina's! But the rest of Part I won't be based on flashbacks (unless the show suddenly gives us some of the bb!queen over the next few episodes and I squeeze it in), so we've got a while before we have to worry about that again.**

**Oh, and I rewatched the flashbacks from QaCF for this and I have to say that Rumple's "roast swan" bit at the beginning would be even more delightful in this canon, when he's taunting Regina and she knows exactly what he's talking about. (8**

**I'm trying to update weekly, but there might be a longer gap over the next two weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to get at least one chapter out. Enjoy!**

* * *

She's so furious that she storms out of camp, packs up Beetle and runs, ignoring the calls of her men and Little John's hand on her shoulder as she collects her gear. She's so unnerved that she rides for hours until forest begins to turn to plains and Beetle is slipping up from exhaustion. She's so– She's…

She just wants to ride.

Whatever had gone on with Regina while she'd been gone, it had thoroughly made a disaster of them both. And Emma doesn't _care_, doesn't want to care about Regina right now or worry about her or do anything other than fume at being caught in the crossfire. Regina's careening toward some kind of dark magic, struggling for power in a life where she's been stripped of it all, and Emma had been fool enough to engage her regardless.

No more. It had been a colossal mistake to ever try and connect with Regina, and she's best off forgetting her altogether.

She yanks on Beetle's reins without noticing and he stops abruptly mid-gallop, sending her flying off of him and landing seat-first on the dusty ground with a yelp. "Beetle!" He nuzzles her reproachfully and she sits up, scowling at herself. "Fine. You can have a break."

She decides to rest for the night, stretched out across her sleeping pad, and follows patterns in the stars instead of sleeping. Last time she'd slept mid-journey Regina had been there, and she doesn't want to duplicate that experience. She isn't even sure it had only been a dream, and she has no idea if Regina might be watching again.

When she does finally succumb to sleep, she dreams of Regina, indistinct impressions of soft hands and dark eyes and playful whispers, and she wakes up wet-eyed and shaking.

She'd first been so taken with Regina because she'd seen something in her that had resonated within Emma. Trapped in a world where neither of them had belonged, a craving for something real that they'd never been able to find. Emma had sought out her own worth in the Merry Men and had found a near facsimile. Regina had…

Regina has found it in darkness, and only after Emma had volunteered herself in its place. She wipes at her eyes, furious again, this time at her own stupid vulnerability. She should never have trusted Regina. Should never have thought that they might be able to offer each other what they'd needed. And now they're both broken and Emma wants nothing more than to remain as far from Regina as possible, holding together the shattered pieces of herself until she can strengthen them enough to heal.

She straightens, glaring out into the emptiness that stretches out in front of her and the lights of a village in the distance. "Come on, Beetle. Let's go make some rich guys miserable."

* * *

She returns home a month later and steals Will's flask at the fire when he asks her where she's been. "Does it matter?"

He frowns for a minute, words she knows she isn't going to like on the tip of his tongue before he bites them back. "Just as long as you've been doing the good work," he returns, and she shrugs moodily and tips back the flask to swallow the last droplets of ale in it.

"I'm sorry to say that the Merry Men have lost their drive without their leader," Alan-a-Dale says, joining them at the fire. "We've had only two raids since you left. And neither was all that successful."

Emma glances around at the men. Most have left the fire, though they still glance back at her and murmur to each other. "I'm not a leader." They don't seem particularly unfocused now, other than the idle curiosity pointed toward her, and she'd only gotten grunts of greeting from most of them when she'd arrived. "Someone else could have worn a white cloak if they needed Swan Hood around."

Alan-a-Dale smiles at her, his eyes twinkling with supercilious amusement. "Do you truly think that's all you are to them, Swan? You've spearheaded every successful mission we've undertaken in over a year, you've chosen how we share our profits and with whom, and you've been a leader for as long as you've been Swan Hood. You're the one we all answer to now, like it or not, and your absence is always felt."

She feels her cheeks warm in the heat of the fire. "I'm just a kid." She doesn't want new responsibility over her men, not even when it's just Will and Alan watching her as though she has all the answers. It's Little John they follow, not a teenaged girl who Little John chooses to follow, and Alan has it all wrong.

He opens his mouth to respond, but then from behind them comes a rumble of, "Not to them," and Little John claps her on the back. "Welcome back."

She manages a smile, just for him. "Thanks." A thought occurs to her. "Hey, want to set up an ambush on the king's road tonight? It's still early." It's disorganized and spontaneous and the kind of raid she'd usually drag just one of her men along for and not endanger anyone else; but there's a low murmur of excitement in the air, a feeling as though anything might be possible, and suddenly there's a surge of energy through the group and a dozen men following her expectantly.

"Oh, okay," she says, a little bemused at the number of volunteers. She might not be a leader, but they _have_ been bored without her.

"Here's how this is going to go." Beetle's exhausted so she climbs onto one of the horses they'd stolen from James last year and claps a hand against its flank, turning smartly to face her men. "I'm going to ride ahead down the road toward George's kingdom and scout out a carriage. We see one, I'll come back for you all, and we'll storm it as a group. Let them see our numbers." She grins, feeling old exhilaration returning for the first time since that day in the woods with Regina. "Let's show them what the Merry Men are made of."

There's a raucous sort of cheer that she's almost certain Will's started and Alan begins a song and then they're all riding out of the forest toward the main road, a dozen Merry Men and their reluctant leader, and Emma throws her cloak around her with a flourish and rides as fast as her horse can manage.

She's felt so heavy for so long, weighed down by regrets and affection and sadness for a girl who'd betrayed that affection that she's forgotten how good it feels to be surrounded by allies, to know that she's about to find some pompous noble and humble him as he deserves. She wonders if the Merry Men have been keeping tabs on the local poor who might be desperate for some food, who've counted on them until now, and for a moment she feels a pang of regret. She can't afford to run away again, not when all these people are counting on her to look out for them.

In the distance, she can make out the silhouette of a carriage idling on the road and she allows herself a quick, satisfied smile. _Right where I want him_. It had been easier than she'd thought, closer than she'd expected, and she hesitates, taking in the scene. She's got a dozen men riding toward her right now, and there's no reason to stop them without further inspection. There's no one visible in the woods, no secret archers or hidden knights, and she pulls out her own bow to fire a warning shot at the carriage.

There's a yelp from the driver's seat and an armored man jumps up, squinting through the dim light at her. "Swan Hood!" He sounds more frustrated than surprised. "I warned her, I told her every day for the past week that this was Swan's road and she'd be best off leaving it be day or night, but she insisted that she meditate here and I won't risk my life for that woman!" He's untangling the horse from the coach as he babbles, and Emma rides closer, raising her bow menacingly. "I'm going, I'm going!" he says, panicked, and he's riding away from her as quickly as he can, leaving the carriage alone in the road and Emma lowering her bow, mystified.

She's still smiling- _what the hell just happened?_- when she catches sight of the banner on the side of the carriage, Leopold's square sigil sharply defined in the light of the moon. "No. No, no, no," she chants to herself, because it's too soon, she hadn't been prepared for this, and there are a dozen men waiting to raid this carriage that almost certainly belongs to the last person she wants to see right now and definitely not in front of a group. "Absolutely not."

And she has no choice but to pull out her knife and hold it loosely in her grasp as she ascends the steps to the carriage door.

Regina is dressed in simple white clothes again, a gown that's as delicate and fragile as she'd once been. She's shivering in the cold of the night but she doesn't wear the cloak hanging beside the window, and Emma has to swallow back the urge to give her her own. There's no need for gallantry with the woman who'd kissed her and tried to command her an instant later.

She glances up only briefly before she averts her eyes, staring at the bag on the seat opposite her as Emma's eyes bore holes into her. "What the hell are you doing here," Emma says, and she gets no response other than Regina's eyes on the seat. She reaches for the bag, yanking it open to pull out its contents. "I don't know what you think about what we…what happened, but I don't want to see you ever-"

She stops midsentence, staring at the item in her hand. King George's crown jewels twinkle back at her, shining against the gold of the crown itself and heavy enough to be the real thing.

"I know you wanted it," Regina murmurs, her voice shaky and low. "It's-"

"What?" Emma demands, eyeing the prize with chagrin. "You _stole_ for me?" She watches with no satisfaction as Regina flinches at the word, her noble sensibilities offended. "Is this some kind of apology? Are you trying to buy me back?" She's alarmed to discover that her heart is pounding and there's enough heat spreading through her to indicates that it might just be successful.

"No?" It's more of a question than a denial, a desperately uncertain inquiry. "Is it-" Regina tilts her head to one side, studying the myriad of emotions battling for purchase on Emma's face. "Is it working?"

Anger wins out in the end, as it always does. "Do you think it's that fucking easy?" Emma clenches her fists around the crown. "Do you think you can- can _take out my heart _and then give me a bribe and I'll be better? Do you have any idea what you did to me?" And oh god, the tears are escaping right in front of Regina, sliding down her flushed cheeks and she's so _angry_ and so _devastated_ and Regina's eyes are glued to hers and the darkness is kept at bay by sorrow of her own. "I trusted you! I showed you my face! I told you my name! Most of my men don't even know that!"

Regina's head sags, her hands squeezing the sides of her seat so tightly that they're turning white. "I know. I never meant for you to…" she starts helplessly before her voice trails off. "I don't know what else I can give you."

A wildness overtakes her, a burning desire for Regina to feel as exposed, as humiliated as she had. "How about your dress?" she says, and tucks away the knife in her hand and crosses her arms over her cloak. "How much is that worth?"

Regina's eyes widen. "Emma-"

"_Swan Hood_," she corrects her, and everything about this feels wrong, feels bitter and petty and wrong, but Regina is nodding slowly and her eyes are settling into cold blankness as she stands.

"This is what you want from me." She doesn't sound surprised, and maybe she's angry but it's nowhere near the fire in Emma's eyes. "I suppose it's only fitting." She turns, abrupt and regal, and reaches around to her back to unbutton the top buttons of her dress.

She thinks she should have felt arousal at this submissive Regina, that she should be furious still and gloating and enjoying her victory here, but it takes only one button before weariness and shame are settling over her. She doesn't want to do this. She doesn't want to hurt Regina like she'd been hurt. "Stop it," she murmurs, reaching out to fasten the button again. "Forget it, okay? I don't…I don't want you to do this."

She doesn't want to play these games with Regina, who'd never been a game to her, and the relief on Regina's face when Regina's turning to stand just opposite her, Emma's arms still around her neck to reach the clasps of the dress, is enough to make her feel sick. "I just want to know why," she whispers. "Why wasn't I good enough for you? What does magic have to offer that I couldn't-"

"I was trying to bring Daniel back to life," Regina says, and Emma hadn't thought that it could get worse but somehow it has and she drops her hands from the queen in an instant. Regina smiles, even though it makes her look vaguely ill. "Magic was supposed to give me happiness. To give me Daniel." Emma takes a step back. "And when it failed, I just…lost control." Regina sighs, looking away from Emma. "I meant to hurt you."

"I'm not hurt," Emma lies stubbornly, and Regina cocks her head knowingly and remains silent. Enough remains between them, unsaid, and Emma blurts out, "But it failed you. Magic failed you. And you still cling to it."

Slim shoulders shrug. "I have nothing else."

"You could have had me." The words escape in a mumble, and Regina looks so sorrowful when she hears them that Emma can't watch her anymore.

The queen's voice is just as hushed as hers, and Emma isn't imagining the hope that laces it. "Could I still?"

It's patently unfair for Regina to ask that of her now, to finally accept her now that she has nothing else and that she's betrayed Emma's trust so deeply. It's awful and selfish and Emma's so tempted that it takes all the willpower she has to sharply shake her head and turn away. "Of course," Regina murmurs, and she sounds so sad that Emma has to move back to the open door of the carriage to breathe in fresh air. "What do we do now?" Regina asks, her voice small.

From the doorway, Emma can see the shadows of her men's horses coming closer. "We live our lives," she says firmly. "Alone. No, apart," she hurries to correct herself. "Apart."

"I see." There's a distance between them, insurmountable by their own making, and Emma hates the regret that threatens to overwhelm her, the sorrow and the second-guessing when Regina is so close now and her walls aren't nearly as high as she'd meant to build them again. "Maybe we could-" she starts, wheeling around.

The carriage is empty, the only sign of Regina's prior presence King George's crown on the seat where Emma had left it.

* * *

She waits nearly a month before she puts away her cloak and visits a smith near the edge of King George's kingdom whom they've worked with before. The towns farthest from the castle have suffered the most from George's lack of funding, extra taxation and an abundance of soldiers in the area, and it seems only fair to go to them with a product of their king's vanity.

This smith gapes at the mess she's made of the crown- hitting it again and again with a mallet until it's misshapen and hopefully hardly recognizable. "I can remove the gems immediately, but I don't have the tools to work with gold. If you can stay a night or two for me to obtain them before I melt it down and reshape it, I can give it to you as a solid gold bar."

"Sounds good." She leans back in her chair, patient to wait, and he's barely out of the room when his apprentice leans forward and whispers, "Was that a _crown_?"

She gives him a dirty look. He looks to be around fifteen, not much younger than her but with an overeager face that makes him out to be more of a child than an adult. "Stay out of my business, kid."

He grins, undeterred. "It's Quinn. My father was a merchant before he died. I know royal jewels when I see them."

"They're mine," she lies easily. "My mother was a princess."

He eyes her. "You don't look much like a princess."

"You don't look much like a king's fool, but we're all full of surprises," she retorts, rolling her eyes. She doesn't have time for apprentices in a smith's shop, not when King George is certainly already hunting the land for his last great riches.

The kid laughs, pushing floppy hair from his eyes. "You're not from around here, are you? Your Highness," he adds, but it's belligerent and amused. "Where'd you get the crown?"

"Don't you know better than to ask a mysterious stranger too many questions?" Emma snaps wearily.

Quinn shrugs. "Don't you know that King George's men have been riding through the kingdom for a month, searching for something? They've gone to all the goldsmiths and jewel merchants and harassed their families in their homes. It's only a matter of time before they head to the lowly blacksmith." Knowing eyes bore into her. "My master isn't a rich man. But as profitable as it is for him to help you, it won't be enough to keep him safe. You're putting him in a lot of danger, coming here."

And there's the guilt, back in earnest as she contemplates his words. He's right. She'd been thinking in terms of giving money back to the villagers, the ultimate plan to infuriate King George, but instead she's put the people at risk by a ruthless king and endangered the ones she'd meant to help. _Reckless teenager_, she reminds herself, and it's not as easy to shrug it off today. "What am I supposed to do?" she murmurs.

Quinn flashes her a smile, though she'd been talking more to herself than him. "The smith has a sister who's been fostering me during my apprenticeship," he says. "Come stay with us for a day or two. No one will know you're here, and you can keep your gems until the knights leave the area."

She frowns, moving the bag of gems from the crown from hand to hand as she contemplates the offer. She'd rather stay in the woods, but if what Quinn says is true then there will be soldiers in the area and she'll arouse much more suspicion if they find her there. And she can't go far if the smith is in danger.

She sighs. She'll stay with him for the night, and then she'll leave for King Midas's kingdom, where no one thinks twice about a stranger with excessive gold. "Thanks."

* * *

She's set up with a family that reminds her a little too much of some of the homes she'd been foisted on in her adolescence. Four children under thirteen and not nearly enough food, a hapless mother caring for them and juggling some kind of herbal remedy business from her home, and Quinn, who sits with the kids and bathes them and puts them to bed with stories. His irritating confidence and carelessness is what draws the rest of his foster family in, what has all the children scurrying to listen to him as Emma sits on the side and surreptitiously pours her soup back into the serving bowl. She doesn't need this family's last scraps of food, not when Beetle's bags are holding enough dried meat for a day and her bow can easily procure her enough for many days to come.

"They want you to eat," Quinn mutters in her ear as he sets out another sleeping pad for her in the room he shares with two of the older boys. "Let them give you what they have. It makes them happy to be able to share."

"You do remember why I'm here, right?" She stretches out on the pad, propping up beside her the canteen where she's slid her bag of gems. "I don't need any help."

"It's not about you," Quinn says, rolling over to face the wall. "And it's not about those two emeralds you slipped into Aleida's apron, either." He sighs. "I thought _you_ would understand."

"Me? Why me?" But they're both distracted by loud voices outside, their hostess's feet padding to the door as someone begins to bang heavily on the door.

Emma's knife is in her grip in an instant, the blade still tucked into her sleeve, and she sits up, exchanging a worried glance with Quinn. "Stay here, kid," she orders, and his mouth falls open with outrage.

"I'm not a kid! I can-"

"You can nothing. Stay _here_," she hisses again, climbing to her feet and slipping out the bedroom door.

The whole house is one large room with only the two bedrooms enclosed, and when she steps out into the main room she has to slip behind the large stove and hide the canteen inside before the visitors see her.

They're clad in the armor of King George's knights, one small and unpleasant-looking and the one behind him looming enormous in the tiny home. And- her heart sinks- he's holding Aleida's apron and the smaller knight is sneering down at the terrified woman as he shoves the emeralds in her face. "Where did you get these?" he demands.

Aleida shakes her head. "I've never seen them before in my life! I don't know how they got there!" She's white-faced and terrified, glancing wildly from knight to knight as though one might rescue her from the other, and the larger knight shakes his head slowly. He looks familiar, actually, maybe one of James's friends, and Emma isn't sure if that's a good thing or bad.

The smaller knight moves closer, touching a finger to her pulse point warningly. "I think you're lying," he growls out, pressing it in as the knight behind him shifts uncomfortably.

Emma crosses the room in eight long steps, knocking the knight's hand aside with her free hand. "No, she isn't," she snaps, pushing Aleida behind her. The woman stutters, bewildered, and Emma rises to her full (admittedly unimpressive) height and tightens her grip on her knife. "I put them there."

"Oh, _shit_," says a low voice from the doorway, and she recognizes Quinn without looking back.

She grits her teeth, already irritated, and glares at the knight. "I left them there as a gift for this woman's hospitality. They were mine." She's dressed in cheap leather, nothing quite as richly designed as Regina's clothing, and she can see the dubiousness in their eyes as she says it.

The little knight swaggers forward, splaying a hand across her stomach and leering when her eyes narrow in response. She doesn't move, acutely aware that shoving him away will cause new trouble for all of them. "Is that so?"

She steps forward, partly out of defiance, partly because she can easily pilfer his sword straight from its hilt at this distance. "I received them as a gift, too," she offers, and the larger knight in the back snorts dubiously.

The smaller knight's breath is stale like raw fish and ale. "From a lover?" he asks, his hand dipping lower against her, and she smiles sweetly back, her fingers drawing out her knife.

"From my queen," she says truthfully and she shivers at the _my_ that isn't a _my _at all and watches his face darken.

"Liar," he growls and shoves her against the wall, one hand around her throat while the other yanks at her trousers, and two things abruptly happen.

She draws her knife and stabs it into his thigh so quickly that he doesn't even have time to howl before the other knight slams a powerful fist into the top of his companion's armor, the two of them collectively sending him into a slump on the ground. They stare at each other for a moment, the knight studying her impassively and Emma tense and ready for another fight, and Emma tucks her hair behind her ears and says, "You should probably go get him some help."

"If you think he's worth it." She might be imagining the faint glint of amusement in the knight's eye as he turns. But she doesn't think so.

* * *

She's retrieving her canteen and heading for the door when Quinn grabs her by the arm. "Wait," he says, sounding almost desperate. "What about your gold?"

"Your brother can keep it." She looks at Aleida, who's holding onto her apron and staring at the emeralds as though she's never seen anything like them before. It makes something rattle loose in Emma's stomach and flip around and Quinn had been right, this feeling isn't about emeralds or Aleida as much as it's about the way Aleida's face is making her warm. She swallows. "Tell him to give it to someone who needs it. I'd rather be on my way before that knight returns."

"Of course." The woman smiles at her and Emma remembers a few of the guardians she'd been passed off to, the ones who hadn't been cruel and had tried to care for her in ways that they never had the means to pull off. "We are so very grateful."

Emma smiles politely and excuses herself, making her way along the dark road toward the edge of the forest where she'd left Beetle in a stable. She focuses on dodging the light and the soldiers wandering the streets. She doesn't want another confrontation, not with these men who are the outcasts and the least notable of King George's knights, and she doesn't trust herself not to cause another fight. Sometimes it's easy to forget that she wears a hood when she's fighting, when she's treated like a foe instead of a victim, and that without it too many people see the latter.

She thinks of Regina for the first time in nearly an hour- it might be a record- and sighs, licking suddenly dry lips. Regina had been reduced to a possession long ago, handed off to a king and dressed in pretty clothes like a valued doll. And Emma doesn't know what she'd have done if she couldn't pull out her knife and fight back against those who seek to possess her. Maybe that's all Regina's done by learning magic. Maybe this is her knife, her bow, her cloak against the world.

She thinks she might understand Regina even better now. But then she remembers her heart in Regina's hand, the darkness in her eyes as Emma obeys her helplessly, and understanding isn't going to be enough. Not for them. Not on this road that Regina's chosen to travel.

She saddles Beetle and shoves her canteen in his saddlebag. Regina is beyond her now, and no gold or gems can change that. She'd had…she'd had a friend, but she's lost her now, and it's time to accept it. It's been two months. It's time.

"Are you going back to them?" says a voice from behind her, and she spins around, her bow ready in her hand in an instant as her eyes bore through the darkness.

Quinn stands at the other end of the stables, his hand resting against the side of another horse. His eyes are bright, still too knowing, too confident, and she's abruptly reminded of another kid who'd run after a thief with no idea what she'd been doing. "To the Merry Men," he clarifies, and she gapes at him. He smirks. "What, you think I couldn't figure that one out? Are you his lover or something?"

She just stares for a minute. "I don't know what you're talking about." He laughs disbelievingly and she amends, "You're not coming anywhere with me."

He doesn't stop smirking. Smug little brat. "I'm good with horses. You know I know my loot. I can be a Merry Man."

She shakes her head, half in denial, half in disbelief. "You're just a kid."

"Oh, and you're so much older than me? How old were you when you started working with them?"

"Older than you!" She glares at him. "Look, you can't just run off and become a thief because you have some overblown idea of how much _fun_ it'll be. That's what Neverland is for, kid. And you're probably getting too old for Neverland."

He's shifting from side to side, his smile more and more strained by each passing moment as she shakes her head again. He doesn't look quite as confident anymore when he takes a deep breath. "I don't- it's not about fun. I don't have anything here."

"No, _I _didn't have anything," she shoots back. "I was a fourteen-year-old orphan with no future and no family and nothing to live for other than begging off strangers in the street. I…I found the Merry Men because I was alone and living with a bunch of thieves in the woods was better than dying in a gutter in the rain." He's listening, his jaw clenched with stubborn denial, and she pushes forward. "You have Aleida's family and an apprenticeship and a future ahead of you. You have people who _need_ you."

Quinn shakes his head. "You're wrong. No one needs me. I could be replaced with another kid in five minutes and no one would even remember I'd existed." He's so small, barely even her height right now. Underfed and determined and certain that she's his ticket out of this village. She wonders if this is how Little John had looked at her. "I want to help people like me. I want to be free."

His eyes are earnest and he's so small and he wants to help people and isn't angry at the world yet and Emma leans against Beetle and sighs and wishes she didn't still feel so warm from Aleida's smile. "You betray the Men and I kill you," she says flatly, and digs into her pack to find a dark cloak that she rarely wears. Maybe she'll swap it for her usual after Quinn's been around for a few days and she's ready to take him into the camp. If he lasts that long at all.

* * *

They stop at a tavern near the border of Leopold's kingdom because Emma sees James's horse hitched outside it. "Why _do_ the Merry Men hate King George so much more than the other kings?" Quinn wants to know. "My last guardian always said that it was because of Swan Hood that our kingdom was so poor."

"It's because of King George and his idiot son that your kingdom is poor," Emma mutters, pushing open the doors of the tavern. "He spoils him and they've bankrupted the kingdom together."

James is sitting at a table at the far end of the room, four knights seated around him and one of the serving wenches on his lap. He's got his sword lying across the table and he's tracing the intricate etchings along one side as he talks to the girl, one hand casually flung around her waist. Emma rolls her eyes and turns back to her own charge, herding him along to a table closer to the door. "Let's get you something to eat. If you're going to be one of us, you need to be having more than just soup." She pokes him. "You're kind of scrawny."

He scowls, puffing out his chest a little like he thinks it might impress her. "I'm quick and I'm stealthy."

"Like a pickpocket, not an outlaw." She'd done both and found that the latter feeds much better.

Quinn sulks but he eats the meat she orders for him so quickly that she's pretty sure he'll have an upset stomach the minute they get back on their horses. Good. The kid can't get everything he wants with a smart mouth and an overblown sense of self.

Speaking of…

James is still talking about his sword, and now his knights are joining in, telling over the tale of some vanquished monster that she's almost certain had actually been an oversized stag. _Seriously_.

Quinn nudges her and she ignores him, feeling an uncomfortable tingle spreading across her shoulders and face. It's almost as though she's being watched, and she glances around but sees no eyes on her. "Why are you stalking Prince James?" he asks, loudly enough that now they get a few sidelong glances.

"Shut your mouth," she warns him and lifts her glass between her hands again, swallowing down the burning liquor. "If you get me into a bar brawl…"

Her voice trails off and she frowns. The odd tingly sensation is strengthening, tickling at her back and her temples now. The tavern door opens behind them and she wiggles her shoulders, glancing back at the door to see if there's a breeze blowing against her back.

Instead she sees Regina framed in the doorway, her eyes tired and resigned as she gazes at Emma.

She should probably ignore her, because she'd declared whatever had been between them over and it had been the _right_ decision, she _knows_ that, but instead she's forcefully squashing a smile and raising her glass in invitation and nodding at the empty spot on the bench beside her so the queen can come join her.

"Who is that?" Quinn whispers, and Regina regards him coolly as she moves to stand behind Emma.

"I'm not staying," she says curtly. "I came here to…to see something. I saw it. I'm done." She moves to leave but Emma catches her wrist. It's stiff in her grasp and Regina still looks so weary, as resigned to Emma and regretful as she'd been the last time they'd met.

"Funny coincidence that I'm here, too," she murmurs. It's been a month and seeing Regina again is like breathing for the first time since, even when the air is hot and stale and burns when it hits her lungs. She doesn't know what she's asking.

But somehow, Regina does, and Emma still doesn't know what the question is. "No." She smiles, acid-sour and pointed at no one but herself. "No, I was fairly certain you'd be here." There's a weight to her answer that she doesn't explain. "I can't imagine how it could have been anyone else."

"What are you talking–" Regina disappears in a puff of purple smoke and Quinn's jaw falls open as Emma's snaps shut.

"Who _was _that?" he repeats when he can speak again, and Emma smiles briefly and thinks about lying.

"My queen, Quinn," she says instead. "That was my queen."


	5. Chapter 5

**I really have been working on this for WEEKS. Promise. I accidentally started another WIP though (how does one accidentally start a WIP? somehow I managed) and updates might come a little more slowly for this fic. This wound up being half the chapter it was supposed to, so we'll probably be in this time period/Part I for another three chapters or so before we fast-forward a few years. Enjoy!**

* * *

"Hold your bow closer to you. _No_, not like that. Are you trying to take out your own eye?" She steadies Quinn's bow and he scowls at her. She rolls her eyes. "C'mon, stop pouting. I'm helping you, okay?"

"I want an axe," he says sulkily, rearranging his bow. He's not bad at this, just impatient and too focused on the target to pay attention to his bow.

She eyes him with skepticism. "When I can believe that you can wield axe without falling over from the weight of it, then you can have one. For now, keep eating and keep up your target practice. It'll strengthen those scrawny little muscles more, okay?" She pokes his bicep, laughing when he yanks it away. "Now. You work on this, I'm going to go find something quick to eat."

She'd seen a patch of promising-looking berries further back in the brush and she traces their steps back, snickering to herself at the sound of an arrow most definitely _not_ hitting the target they'd set up and Quinn's low curse in response.

He needs this. He's still overconfident and reckless and driven by a cause, bright-eyed and enthusiastic in all the ways she can remember possessing her when she'd been fifteen, and she'd had to pull him away from the Merry Men before they'd gotten too annoyed with him and started more than just good-natured ribbing. She's going to teach him to carry his weight and learn his own strengths, and maybe eventually he'll be ready to properly join the Merry Men.

It had taken her months before she'd been able to carry a proper sword when she'd first come to camp, and by then she'd fallen in love with the intricacies of archery. Her bow had taught her patience, taught her accuracy and caution and an art she'd never thought she could master before then. And she'd been a natural from the start, enough to give Little John pause when he'd tried to shrug off her desire to join the Merry Men. Quinn is…determined.

Maybe that's all he'll need, in the end. It's gotten him this far.

She hears his voice, muffled through the trees, and perks up. "Emma?" he's calling. "Um…you might want to come here?" He sounds unsure, a twinge of anxiety in his voice, and she frowns and leaves the berries. "Emma!" he calls again, and she hurries through the brush back to him.

He's standing opposite the target, his hands empty and his eyes fierce and a little panicked, and Regina is lounging against the tree where they'd left the target. Quinn's weapon is in her hands and she's examining it with interest, tracing the curve of the wood along the belly of the bow as she awaits Emma.

Emma tenses. "Get back to camp, Quinn."

"But I–"

"Go!" she orders, her eyes on Regina, and Quinn scampers.

She sighs, running her tongue over dry lips. "Give me the kid's bow back."

"He was pointing it at me," Regina says, pulling on the string. "I've never used one of these before. I suppose a fireball will do me more good than a piece of wood, though." She looks up. Her eyes are still an impossible mix of vibrant fire and the dangerous power behind them, and Emma takes a step forward. She isn't sure if she's attracted or protective and she doesn't know if it matters either way.

"You shouldn't be here," she finally manages.

Regina smiles at her, though it never moves past her mouth. "I want to hire you, actually, for your rather unique services. I can pay well enough to feed a small village for a month." Two necklaces appear in her palm and a golden men's ring above it. "How about it?"

"You want to hire me?" She blinks, a blush spreading across her back and up to her face. "This isn't about…um…_us_, is it? Is this some kind of proposition?"

"What?" Regina's eyes go wide as she processes the question. "You mean a personal companion?" She's suddenly just as red as Emma and she focuses on the bow again, refusing to make eye contact with her as the regal airs fade away with embarrassment. "No! No, that's not what I meant! I don't want– I mean, I never thought that– I want you to steal for me!" she finally blurts out, moving forward to drop the jewels into Emma's hand.

"_Oh_." She can't believe she'd gone straight to thoughts of _servicing_ Regina, and she flushes even harder and stares down and does not think about how the idea of it sends a certain thrill through her. Regina's hand is still outstretched over hers, smooth skin darker against her own pale palm, and she almost reaches up to take it. "Can't you just use your magic to take whatever you want?" She notices that the necklaces aren't Regina's style at all, and she thinks she'd seen a similar one on Snow White at the masquerade ball. And up close, the ring is clearly the signet ring of a king.

Regina looks up again, her face grim. "Not this time," she allows. "Where I want to go…magic will only alert him to our presence. I need a true thief to help me here. And you're the best I know."

She grins, forcing herself to forget the tension between them. "I'm the only you know."

"Indeed you are." Regina's hand grazes her own before it retreats and they both shiver and look down. "Will you do it?"

"Where are we going?" She frowns. "What are we stealing? Why do I have the feeling that I'm not going to survive this one?"

"You'll be fine. I'm not going to let you get hurt." But Regina looks uneasy as she says it, as though she isn't entirely sure that she can enforce that. "We're going to the Dark One's castle. He's taken…something of mine."

"You going to tell me what?"

"No."

"Regina."

The queen sighs. "_Please_, Emma. I don't have anywhere else to go." She's pale, her face drawn and her eyes haunted, and Emma leans in to study her.

Her hair is limp, bound back simply instead of those elaborate waves they'd been when they'd last spoken. Her eyes are dark with bags below them, and when she looks at Emma, it's with pleading eyes that are close to shattering. She looks…she looks _terrified_, and Emma swallows and knows what she's going to say before she finds the words. "Fine. Let's do this."

Regina exhales and moves closer, seizing Emma's hands in her own. "Thank you," she murmurs. "I'll make it worth your while."

"No, I don't think you will." But she allows the contact, the warmth of Regina's hands around hers, and she's about to speak when she senses eyes in the forest behind them. _Wait_, she mouths, swinging around with her bow out in an instant, arrow pointed at the figure in the trees. "Show yourself!" she snaps out.

There's nothing, and beside her she hears the sizzle of flames. Regina is holding a _ball of fire_ as though it's a weapon, eyes dark and wary. "Show yourself!" she commands, and it comes out a hell of a lot more dangerous from the other girl.

"Okay! Okay!" She recognizes the voice and lets out an exasperated sigh as Quinn steps out from the trees. "Please don't set me on fire."

"What the hell are you doing, Quinn? I thought you were the Dark One!" she barks out, charging over to him to grab him by the neck and slam him against a tree. "I _told_ you to get back to camp!"

"Who is this boy?" Regina demands. "Have you picked up a shadow?"

"I was going to! I just wanted to make sure that you were okay!" he gasps. "You seemed really afraid of her."

He glares at Regina and she stares back, unimpressed. "Emma isn't afraid of me."

"She seems like she is." He scowls. "And you're taking her to the Dark Castle? I don't think so." He's brimming with all the righteous fury of youth, protective of her as though she isn't perfectly capable of taking care of herself and he isn't a kid who isn't even strong enough to hold an axe.

Regina looks taken aback at even being questioned. "You're going to tell _us_ what to do?"

"Quinn, shut up." She releases him and gives him a shove. It's not affectionate. Maybe a little. "Go back to camp and don't talk about this to anyone."

"I'm not going back to camp without you!" He straightens, cocky smirk back in place. "If you're going on a suicide mission with _her_, I'm coming too."

"What are you, my squire? No, you're not." She doesn't need an overconfident kid trailing her every move. Why had she ever brought him back here to begin with? And she's not bringing him to the Dark One's castle as a willing sacrifice, no matter how much he's already making Regina's eyebrow twitch in very satisfying ways. "You got a death wish?"

"I want to help," he grumbles. "You haven't let me go on a single raid since I got here. I don't want to spend the next five years doing petty pickpocketing until you decide I'm 'old enough' to do the big stuff." He tilts his head, narrowing his eyes at them. "I bet the rest of the Merry Men would be interested in knowing that you're risking your life for a _royal_."

Regina's face darkens dangerously. "If you get in my way, I can get you _out_ of my way." She's waving her hands again, a purple light arcing out from her fingers to wrap around Quinn, and Emma steps between them hastily.

"Cut it out, both of you," she orders. "Quinn, this isn't a normal raid. We can't afford to have someone with us, slowing us down."

"I can keep up!" He has that look on his face, the one that gives her the uncomfortable feeling that he'll jump onto a horse and follow them to the castle anyway, and for a moment she actually considers letting Regina take care of him. "You know I'm a better rider than you."

"You're _competent._ Don't get too cocky about it." She's the better archer, anyway, and what good is a horse if you can't fight back?

"Does this mean I'm coming?" He bounces on his heels, grinning as though he knows he's already won.

She sighs. "Fine. You can ride with us, but you're not going anywhere near the Dark Castle." She fixes stern eyes on him. "I know you and I'm serious. This is your last chance. You listen to me or I leave you behind or have _her_–" She jerks a thumb at Regina. "Take care of you."

"Deal."

"No!" Regina says, outraged. "I'm not hiring you to bring along dead weight!"

"You won't even tell me what I'm supposed to be stealing, so how about I make the decisions here?" She's officially chosen the two most infuriating people she cares about to join her, and she rolls her eyes and leads them out of the clearing, already regretting it.

"Don't worry, Your Majesty," she hears Quinn mutter to Regina. "I won't get in the way of your robbery date."

"Did you not see what I can do with a fireball?" she snaps back, and Emma bites back her smirk and rolls her eyes instead.

* * *

Regina brings a horse of her own, a dark stallion as impressive as any of the royal horses they've stolen, and Quinn selects another stallion nearly as large. They glare at each other and their horses snort threateningly, two tiny riders atop their steeds, and Emma and Beetle plod on behind them. If horses could roll their eyes, Beetle would definitely have the same expression as she does.

"Your horse doesn't look like he has much endurance," Quinn notes, taking the lead. "Sure you don't want to take one of ours?"

Regina's mouth drops open with outrage. "How dare you! Rocinante is more than capable of outrunning your oversized pony." She quickens her pace, catching up easily, and Emma hurries to catch up to them.

"_Rocinante_?" she repeats. "That's a mouthful."

Regina raises her eyebrows, amusement glinting in them. "Beetle?"

"We can't all be as pretentious as you when we name our horses. I like Beetle."

"Of course you do." But Regina allows an affectionate smile that leaves Emma chewing on her lip and playing with Beetle's mane and studiously not looking up again.

Quinn snorts. "I thought you were much more impressive before I got to know you, Emma." He rides ahead again and they both stare after him, bemused.

"He's a child," Regina says finally. "Smug and presumptuous."

"Yeah, an asshole. Like a miniature Prince James." She laughs as he charges forward again, half off course ahead of them. "Like a miniature me. You should have known me at fifteen."

"I know you now. I can imagine." But Regina's eyes are sparkling with something far from malice. "Not too unlike how I was at fifteen, actually."

"How were you at fifteen?" Emma asks curiously. She can't imagine Regina before all this, before she'd been a queen and before sadness and darkness both had overtaken her. She would have been young, pampered, a kind soul unaware of what was to come, and she licks her lips, suddenly morose.

"I was riding around in men's clothing and defying my mother in every way possible," Regina says, and Emma's so startled she laughs with delight.

"You weren't!"

"I spent half my time being punished and the other half the time finding new reasons to invite punishment. My mother was certain I'd never marry." She smiles, not without some bitterness. "Of course, she made certain that that happened."

"I hope she's happy," Emma mutters. She'd gotten what she'd wanted, hadn't she? And now Regina's on a path to becoming just like her.

"I wouldn't know." Regina shrugs, and she's struggling to look nonchalant but failing miserably. "She's gone now." Her lip quivers a tiny bit and the haunted look from earlier is back in full force, slowing her down as she rides and doesn't turn back to Emma.

"What do you mean? What happened to her?" Regina shrugs again. Emma leans toward her and nearly topples off of Beetle. "What happened to her, Regina?"

Rocinante speeds up without warning and Regina's riding ahead with Quinn before Emma can catch up, her eyes on the road in front of them and Beetle lagging behind again.

But she'd seen the guilt layered over the fear, the awareness that something had happened there that terrifies Regina as much as it eats at her, and she gallops forward until she's side-by-side with Regina and Quinn once more. "You know, when I was ten, I lived with a miller's family. He was a hard man, but he wasn't cruel like the friend who'd handed me off to him. As long as I worked hard, I was fed and given a place to sleep and I was happy."

Regina turns to her, a pained look on her face, and Emma waves it off. "It was fine. It was good. Then he died and his eldest son came home to take charge of the mill. He hated me, thought I was a waste of space, and so whenever I'd say anything he didn't like– it's possible I had a smart mouth," she adds, and both Regina and Quinn snort. "He used to lock me in one of the grain closets for a day or so each time."

"I would have killed him," Regina says darkly. Quinn is silent for once, his eyes solemn and knowing. There are many millers in this realm, many adults looking for children for free labor and expecting nothing more than that. Emma doesn't remember much affection, or anyone who'd see the little girl with dirty curls and defiance in her eyes and take her in as a daughter.

"I thought about killing him all the time," she says. "Or dreamed of him dying instead and freeing me from that life. I was ten and I hated the world and I hated him most of all. Eventually, I ran away to the closest town and worked for a carpenter who was kind to me. But if I'd been trapped in that mill for much longer, I don't think I would have lasted there too long without searching for anything- _anything_- that could make him go away." She understands Regina's attachment to magic in that way, understands whatever might have happened to her mother, and she's only glad that she'd never been in a position to become so desperate and bitter for too long.

When she peeks at Regina, the queen is staring right back, and she offers her a tiny nod as Quinn groans, "You're both so pathetic. Aren't you supposed to be married to a king?" and takes the lead again.

They speed up their pace, hooves clip-clopping against the road as they drive forward. The Dark Castle is deep in the mountains beyond King Leopold and King George's kingdoms, distant from most of the land that Emma's grown up in. She's been there on rare occasions but never too close to the Dark One's castle itself. The ogres still roam free there, the towns remaining still ravaged by the Ogre Wars, and it's not the place a thief travels to steal riches.

Emma doesn't ask Regina about using her magic but Quinn says it on the first night, when he's lying on his back on a thin sleeping pad a few feet away from where Regina's lighting a fire for them. "Why can't you just…poof us over there? Like you did in that tavern and in the woods?"

"Oh, was that you in the tavern?" Regina asks interestedly. "I thought Emma was being courted."

Emma narrows her eyes at her. "No, you didn't." Quinn had looked even younger then, gangly and tiny like an adolescent. She'd felt like she'd been taking her little brother out to play, not like she'd been dining with an equal.

"No, I didn't," Regina agrees easily. She nods to Quinn. "I can't bring us very close to the castle without being detected, and I don't think I have enough training just yet to move us _and_ our horses across half the realm. So we do this the non-magical way."

"Just yet?" Emma echoes, raising her eyebrows.

Regina tilts her head, staring into the flames before them. "Rumplestiltskin believes I'm the most powerful sorceress he's ever seen." There's a smile twitching at her lips, a quiet pride in the statement, and Emma swallows and tries not to think about Regina weeping over the heart of a unicorn.

"And that's good." It's more of a question than a comment, escaping her lips before she thinks better of it.

Regina's smile fades in the firelight, becoming still and tense as though Emma's personally offended her. "I suppose you have the right to judge me for it," she allows, not without resentment.

Emma swallows. "I'm not _judging_ you. I'm just…curious." But she's on edge and Regina can see it, and they both fall silent, staring into the flames as Quinn grumbles about the rocky ground.

* * *

She sees Regina tossing and turning in her sleep, seeking out warmth where there is none as she shivers and groans out little whimpers. She looks so vulnerable like this, unguarded and soft without her power and regality to build a wall between them. She looks like she had at James's birthday ball, where she'd held Emma's hand and listened to her talk with cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling.

It hurts, seeing her like this and thinking of what could have been, and Emma rolls over and stares at Quinn instead.

She senses Regina getting closer, shifting in her sleep until she's half off her own sleeping pad and nearly on Emma's, and she bites her lip and doesn't move away, not even when Regina's next shift has her grumbling in her sleep, seeking out warmth and snuggling up against Emma's side. "Are you even asleep?" she whispers, but Regina only nuzzles her neck in response.

She stays very still and lets one hand slide to cover Regina's where it's draped over her waist, and sleep comes at last moments later.

* * *

They ride through the second day with little discussion. Quinn and Regina fight for the lead position again, and Emma's fairly certain that, had she and Beetle not been there to stubbornly establish a responsible pace, they'd both be far ahead with horses who've given up on riding anymore. "Rocinante would be fine," Regina objects when she points that out. She strokes his mane with more affection than she's shown toward anyone else this whole trip. "I would never push him more than he could handle."

"I think you push everyone a little more than they can handle," Emma says in response, passing her some dried meat from their rations.

Regina lips curl ever so slightly. "We have that in common, then." Her fingers move to Emma's shoulder, the same tenderness offered to her as she had her horse, and Emma's horrified to discover that she melts in a single instant.

"Oh, shut up," she says, shakier than she'd meant to, and she pushes away from Regina as the other girl's eyes glint with smugness.

Regina had been gone when she'd woken up, out with the horses grooming Rocinante, and she'd shown no signs of knowing that she'd slept curled up against Emma for the bulk of the night. But she's been more touchy-feely today, quick to talk to Emma without the tension that laces most of their encounters now. She wonders again if Regina had been awake last night, if she'd known that she hadn't pushed her away.

Regardless, it changes nothing, and they ride on, Regina pulling ahead of Quinn permanently for the rest of the day like it had never been a contest. "She's a queen," he mutters to Emma. "She's probably been trained to ride her whole life. And she has magic."

"Yeah, yeah." They stop riding at nightfall. They're high enough in the mountains now that riding with the freezing night air in their face is perilous, and Emma starts a fire while Quinn settles the horses. Regina sits alone with a cloak wrapped around her, shivering and inspecting their remaining rations with distaste.

"I'm not going hunting, so it's that or nothing, Your Majesty," Emma informs her, rolling her eyes. Her own grey cloak is thin from years of use and she huddles by the fire, letting it warm her hands.

"This bread is hard as a rock." Regina makes a face. "If it were safe for me to use my magic this close to the Dark Castle without being found, I'd conjure us up a feast."

"Sounds convenient." She doesn't bother hiding the sarcasm in her tone, and Regina looks at her curiously.

"Why do you loathe magic so? I understand why you'd balk at…at taking a heart," she says slowly, and they both stare determinedly at the fire instead of each other. "But magic isn't dark in nature. It's only a tool."

"It's a tool given only to a lucky few." Emma remembers still, recalls the mocking laughter of the nobleman who had taken her in when she'd been four and five as he'd said it. _Magic, child. Magic found them what they truly wanted._ "It's no different than any other riches. It corrupts, it picks and chooses who to help…" She wraps her cloak tighter. "I never had a fairy godmother, but I'm sure that Snow White does, doesn't she?"

Regina barks out a bitter laugh. "Of course she does." She clenches her fists around the edges of her cloak.

"And you never had one, either, did you?" They'd both needed one far more than a spoiled princess who has dozens of servants who would do anything for her. And yet, two little girls used and abused by the world had never qualified for good magic.

"Not quite," Regina agrees, and it's odd phrasing but she's just as grim about it as Emma. "But now I have magic of my own. I don't need a _fairy_ to rescue me. I'd thought…for a long time I'd thought that I hated magic, that magic was the reason why my mother had been so dark. But now I know. It's not about the power, it's about who wields it. It's about being sure that you have the most magic."

"And look what it's done to you." Emma glares at the fire, suddenly angry. "Don't you see the difference? Do you think you'd have ever done what you did to me without it?" A hand slides to her heart unconsciously. "That wasn't _you_."

Regina watches her in silence. "Yes, it was, Emma. It was always me." Her eyes are sad but firm, resigned to a reality that Emma has yet to accept. "I loved you, did you know that?" Emma abruptly stops breathing. Loved. _Loved_.

Regina offers her a small smile. "You were the only person in my life I still cared about. All I wanted was to keep you safe."

"By taking my heart away from me?" She remembers what the man teaching Regina had told her about hearts, about how to control them with magic. She wouldn't have been able to do anything for herself if Regina had held her heart. She wouldn't have been _herself_. And she doesn't trust Regina enough to have ever given it freely. Maybe she would have before, but that's a whole new form of irony.

"I would have taken care of it," Regina assures her, and how can she _not understand_ like this? How can she believe that Emma would have accepted that?

But she does. Sincerity is written across her face, earnest belief that Emma would see things the way that she does, and her guard is down again and she looks just like she had before all this magic. And she still truly believes that Emma would have been happy and protected with no heart. "You're right," she murmurs, and Regina's brow wrinkles in confusion. "Magic didn't make you do that."

She bites back nausea and hates herself for the words still ringing in her ears. _I loved you, did you know that?_

* * *

The Dark One's castle is visible by the time the sun is high in the sky the next afternoon, deep in a valley within a cluster of mountain peaks not too far away. Which means ogre country and Regina definitely can't use her magic without being noticed, so Emma keeps her bow at her side and they take the most populated road they can find.

They eat in a tavern in the poor lands around the castle in the evening and purchase a room for Quinn to stay in after the two of them leave. Regina sniffs at the food and declares the room disgusting and unlivable, but she still takes Quinn's bed for herself and leaves him and Emma on sleeping pads on the floor. "Don't you live in the woods anyway?" she points out.

"We have cabins and tents and shelters," Quinn grumbles. "And _beds_." Emma spends more nights out on her own than most, and she's more than accustomed to sleeping pads in the woods, but Quinn hasn't been doing this for nearly as long as she has.

And he's just bratty enough to be a match for Regina, who raises an eyebrow and smirks. "You wanted to come along, didn't you?"

"I wanted to see the Dark Castle, not go camping with a spoiled queen!"

Regina's lips are bared in what's probably a smirk but looks a lot more like a grimace. "You're a child. Do you know what the Dark One does to annoying children?"

"Okay!" Emma claps her hands. "How about we talk about our plan once we get there? Or what route we're taking down the mountain tomorrow? Or tell stories around the fire, I don't care. Anything but more bickering."

Regina hmphs and sits up on her bed in a flounce. Quinn perks up. "Have you ever heard the legend of how the Dark One was first created?" They shake their heads. "They say that he was once just a man, a princeling of a distant kingdom. He was to inherit most of the lands that we have now once he came of age, and he was handsome and good with a sword and women and men flocked to him, hoping to earn his favor.

He was so renowned that he caught the attention of the Black Fairy, they say." Quinn sits against the edge of the fireplace, staring into the flames as he recounts his story. "She was smitten at once, so she clothed herself as a mortal and came to meet him. He fell in love with her and they wed and her mortal body was soon expecting a child."

Quinn's voice is almost melodious as he mimics the cadence of a storyteller, rhythmic and lilting. Emma stretches out onto her sleeping pad, letting him lull her to restfulness. "And then the prince found her wand, hidden deep within her bedrooms. He was furious at the lie, and he didn't know what his child would become. They fought each other that night, he with a dagger and she with her wand, and he plunged his dagger into her heart."

"What a charming story," Regina says. Emma kicks at the side of the bed warningly.

Quinn continues. "Her heart was as black as her name implies, of course, and though she did die a mortal death on that day, it was one that the man would come to regret. His own heart blackened as quickly as she died, becoming a dark and withered thing. And the Black Fairy's power was passed into the prince's dagger and thusly into his heart, giving him magic untold but bitterness and hatred just as strong. At the end of the day, it was he who was the monstrous Dark One." He shrugs, laughing off the story as soon as it had been completed. "It's nonsense, of course. Can you imagine the Black Fairy falling in love? Once your heart gets that black, there's no coming back from it."

Regina frowns. "You don't think people with dark hearts can love?"

"Do you?" Quinn shakes his head. "Isn't that what it means? She couldn't love the prince, not for real. She wouldn't have even loved the baby. She loved power."

"Of course she would have loved her baby. Dark magic doesn't keep you from _feeling_; it just lets you make bad decisions more easily. And on a bigger scale." Regina dares a glance at Emma, who watches them both sleepily. It's too late at night to start thinking about the nature of evil and love and its implications, no matter how stubbornly determined her companions are to argue about something.

"It wouldn't be true love, though. Not the way a parent should care for a child. It's twisted and evil and that baby was probably lucky it was never born," Quinn says dismissively. "I lived in homes where the parents didn't love their babies. I'd rather grow up with no family at all than with parents like that."

"You're a fool," Regina says coolly. "All parents love their children. Some aren't very good at showing it, but it doesn't mean they don't love them." Emma thinks about Regina's mother, standing below her as tree limbs snake around her daughter's body, a serene smile on her face. She wants to say something to her, to join in on this conversation and provide Regina with some support against Quinn's firmly black-and-white beliefs. But what does she know about parents and children and being loved by either? She closes her eyes instead, saying nothing to Quinn's answering scoff.

"You live in an ideal world," he says. "_Your Majesty_."

There's a long silence. "You know nothing about where I live."

"And you know nothing about darkness." Quinn laughs sharply. "I spent my childhood in poverty in King George's domain. My eyes are wide open to misery and pain." Regina says nothing. "Who taught you about magic? Was it the Blue Fairy when you were an itty-bitty princess, learning how to make flowers bloom on their own and conjuring chocolate cake? Did an elf come to your door and offer to make you a hero among your people?" His tone is mocking, and he's so innocent, so overconfident even when he's seen what Regina's capable of, and Emma's not entirely sure that Regina won't blast him with some fireballs right now.

She's about to crack an eye open when Regina says, very evenly, "Actually, it was the Dark One himself."

Which isn't entirely a surprise. Emma had seen the man teaching Regina and she'd known there was something off about him, something inhuman and dark beyond her comprehension, but she hadn't made the connection between Regina's teacher and the Dark One until they'd left on this voyage. But Quinn isn't expecting it, and she can hear his sharp intake of breath before he speaks again, more timid than she's ever heard him before. Sensible. "Why would a queen need the services of the Dark One?"

Regina laughs darkly, a low chuckle that settles into Emma's veins. "Because, Quinn, some parents aren't very good at showing their love for their children," she echoes. "But others are a little too ardent."

Quinn presses onward and Regina has quick rejoinders and Emma struggles to listen to them over her exhaustion, the low murmurs of queen and boy carrying her over to slumber.


End file.
